Boogster’s Blog

Been golfing for the past three days. I’m still having a hard time breaking 90. I feel as though I’m swinging well, but somewhere in between a round, I go back to my “old swing” and everything goes awry. I can’t put my finger on it, but when I’m swinging bad, I’m definitely coming too far inside on the takeaway, then coming over the top to compensate on the follow through. Pretty annoying. I did shoot 91, 93, 93 on my last three rounds though, which means I’m getting pretty close. It also means that I’m winning money on the course. Definitely up about $125 in the last three rounds.

The water heater at my parent’s townhouse started leaking a few days ago and I had to get the damn thing replaced. I went to servicemagic.com and got some leads on some plumbers. Within seconds of filling out the form, I started getting a bunch of calls. The first plumber wanted $1200 to replace the damn thing. They had like 41 good reviews, so they were definitely a reputable company. The second one wanted $900, which included a $150 “permit” that they said was required to replace a natural gas water heater. The last guy said that he could do it for $650. You know what I said? LOCK IT UP.  The last guy had 5 reviews, 3 of which sounded very much like he got his sisters and kids to write the reviews.

Anyways, I got what I paid for.  Yesterday morning, I sat there watching them install the 50 gallon, natural gas water heater.  And IT WAS A SHOW.  First off, they brought the wrong type of water heater.  Electric instead of gas, so one of the dudes had to go back to the “store” to get the correct one.  They were already running an hour late.  Finally, they brought the correct water heater and started installing the thing.  Everything went smoothly.  I was actually a little nervous because of the natural gas line that they had to disconnect, but it didn’t look like they were doing anything stupid.  So, an hour and  a half later, the tank was installed and I went upstairs to check the water.  No hot or even warm water, and the water was kind of spurting out…little water pressure.

An hour later, I discovered that the water main knob had not been turned back on.  DAGGER.  After turning the knob to “open”, we could hear the water rushing through the pipes, but still no water was getting into the brand new water heater.  So, the dude turned on the blow torch and went to town on the pipes connecting to the water heater, thinking that they must’ve left the plug in the pipe or something like that.  Mind you, this was inside the closet with the natural gas pipe already hooked up to the water heater.  It was funny because after one of the dudes torched one the solder filled pipes, the other dude tried to clean the solder with a dry rag.  Needless to say the hot pipes burned through the rag and his hand at the same time…with some of the rag particles stuck onto the pipe.  I was thinking to myself that the townhouse was a goner…we were gonna blow up and be a statistic of stupid people.

After checking both pipes, and making sure that there were no plugs left in them, I told them that water wasn’t getting into the tank.  At that time, I decided that these two jokers were amateurs and I had to take control of the situation myself, since I really didn’t want to blow up in the house.  Another hour later, we…I discovered that the open/shut knob on the pipe leading to the water heater was still in the “shut” position.  What an absolute joke.  Finally, water was going into the tank, and everything was good after that.

One of the dudes had six fingers.  I didn’t notice it until he started turning the knobs.  Never seen anything like it.  I was going to take out my iphone to take a picture of it, but I wasn’t sure if the dude would’ve liked it or not.  I think he would’ve been okay with it, but I didn’t want to chance having a six-fingered eye poke.  It was kinda funny too…the dude had no clue which way to turn the knobs to open and shut.  Lefty loosy, righty tighty.  Not to mention that all of the knobs were labeled.  Not sure how they could be a plumber if they have no clue which way to turn the knobs.  I guess that’s what I get for being cheap.  Anyways, I think all is good now.

So, I got the new iPhone 3GS last week.  Damn thing costed me $517.  $499 for the phone, then $18 for the phone upgrade.  I’m not really sure why I got it…maybe it’s because I knew that I was going to get it eventually, so why delay the inevitable, right?  The only thing that’s new about the 3GS is the nike+ ipod support, faster processor (not really noticable), video support, 3.2 mega pixel camera, compass…that’s about it really.  I do like being able to take a video and uploading it to youtube in the matter of seconds.  Other than that, it’s really NOT worth it.

I put my old iPhone 3G on craigslist a few days ago, and a bunch of bites.  There were so many damn Nigerian scammers out there.  I must’ve gotten like 20-30 emails with 90% of them being scammers.  I tell you, they are getting smarter these days.  They ask a quick question with the name John Cole or something like that…and the question is usually something like “is the item still for sale?”.  Then, when you reply, they say that they’re buying the item for a distant relative and then they ask you for your paypal email address.  I’m not sure how the scam actually works, but I think somehow they ask you for a small amount of money sent via paypal for shipping or something stupid like that.  Anyways, homey don’t play that paypal shit.

Well, I haven’t played much online poker lately.  Here’s my chart:

Even though I’m on an uptrend, I’m trying to quit at the peak.  I know that the online poker gods are viscious, as I’ve been there and done that plenty of times before.  Looks like EB is having a hell of a time as well:

http://mediocrepokerradio.com/blog/you-suck-warning-pissed-off-rant/

Everybody that I know that has played online poker for an extended period of time has gone through these ridiculous swings where you just can’t win.  Look at Durrrr…he went through a multi-month, multi-million dollar swing.   Back in the days, I went through a period where I won $10k, and then lost most of it back in a matter of weeks.  I’ve been there and I’ve done that.  One too many times.

Alright…I doubled my short EUR and GBP positions.  Holding 5000 euros and 3500 GBP now.  Still holding my 300 shares of IBKR for the longer term.  I eventually want to get long this market for the “last run”, but I think we’re still a few weeks out from the next leg.  In the mean time, I am making a list of stuff that I want to buy.  UYM actually sticks out here.   Then, I’ll probably just stick to the double index longs.

Time to head out the Congressional for the AT&T National.  Tiger tees off at 1:02.  This will be my first golf tourney, so we’ll see how it goes.  No iPhone on the course.  DAgger.

Forgot to post this at the beginning of the month:

• Google Adsense: +$5.94
• Full Tilt Poker: +$50.00
• Intellilinks: +$67.73
• Text Link Ads: +$40.30
• Private Text Link: +$20.00

Pretty good for having only one reader.

I still can’t believe that there isn’t a multimedia device out there that does what I want it to do.  Here’s what I want:

• Support most multimedia formats (i.e. h.264, mp4, divx, mp3, mkv, etc.)
• allow me to stream video files from my pc to my 1080p LCD via hdmi
• allow me to transfer all of my multimedia files via gigabit ethernet
• have a minimum of 1TB storage space accessible via the LAN (NAS)

I have the WD Media Player, which is great, but I had to buy 16GB USB flash drive and a 750GB USB to hold all of media files.  Then, in order to copy all of my files over, I have to remove the USB cable and plug it into my laptop.  I want to do it via wireless and not have to move from my couch.

I also bought a 1TB Western Digital NAS, which allows me to store files wirelessly, but it can’t connect directly to my Western Digital Media player since the USB ports are only allowed for additional storage devices.  I barely even use this damn thing right now.

Then, I have my old Dell D810 hooked up to my LCD via RGB.  I gotta boot it up every time I want to use it, and I stream the movies to my LCD using VLC.  The problem with that is that I don’t get true 1080p and I don’t get digital audio.

I’ve been looking at a few options.  The Mvix Ultio looks promising:

This thing ships in two weeks.  The cost is $169 then you can add on a 1TB hard drive for $90.

Then, we got the Popcorn Hour C-200:

I imagine that I will end up getting one of the last two.

I pulled into a the driveway of a friend’s house yesterday and some lady came over to my car after I was parked and asked me to “slow down” next time.  Apparently, her kids run around in the streets quite often, and I was driving way too fast.  My initial instinct was to tell her to F off, but I gritted my teeth and said “OK”.  First off, I wasn’t even going that fast…there were speed bumps in the road…secondly, instead of telling people to slow down, why doesn’t she just tell her kids to stop roaming the streets where cars could potentially hit them?

When I was a little kid, my parents always told me to look both ways when crossing the street and if I ever ran around in the streets, my parents would slap me silly for doing so.  Here’s how I see it, you can’t control the way people drive, but you can control what your kids do.  For every one of me that she stops and tells to slow down, there will be 10 others who won’t slow down.  No chance that she’ll be able to tell everyone to slow down.  Not to mention that there will be some that drive faster than me, and probably some that are even a little drunk or a lot drunk.  I think it’s better if she just educated her kids to stop running around in the streets blindly, instead of trying to convince every fast driver to slow down because if her kids keep running around in the streets like dumb little kids, they will get hit eventually, regardless of whether the driver is going fast or not.

There’s a guy in my condo building who always complains on the condo listserve that random trash is left in the trash room (instead of being thrown down the trash chute).  Another condo owner suggested that the in-house cleaning crew goes by each of the trash rooms every day to make sure that there is no trash left in the room.  And the guy responds, “why should I pay more in condo fees for someone else’s problem?”. Here’s how I see it.  No matter how hard you try, you will not be able to stop everyone in our condo building from leaving trash in the trash room.  It just won’t happen because there will always be that random dummy who just doesn’t get it.  I can go to the trash room right now and drop a deuce and no one will be able to stop me.  The point is, the dude should stop complaining, have everyone pay the cleaning crew to do additional chores and the problem is solved.  No matter how hard you try, you will never be able to control other people’s actions.  If you choose to live in a condo building, then you are choosing to deal with the hundreds of other owners.  Your other alternative is to move out into a single family house where you don’t have to deal with anybody else’s trash.

When I was riding my bike (1999 Yamaha FZR 600) back in the days, my biggest fear was having some crazy driver sideswipe me because he didn’t see me or some crap like that.  Riding a bike, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to control the way people drove, but I also knew that I could ride my bike in a way that would minimize my risk.  Rarely would I ride right next to a truck or even a car.  If there was a car next to me, I would either speed up or slow down so that I could see the car in my view.  If there was a car in front of me, I would give myself enough distance to stop or swerve just in case the car did something stupid.  I was always thinking 3 steps ahead.  In poker, the cardinal rule is to always leave yourself outs.  While riding my bike, I always gave myself outs.  I was always thinking, okay, if this car were to stop suddenly, what would I do? I kinda had to do that because one wrong move and I could’ve been pummeled.

So, what happens when you do everything right…educate your kids to stop playing in the streets, pay the cleaning crew to clean the trash room, ride your bike perfectly, and then some drunk dude pummels you while you’re crossing the street?  In that case, you just gotta play the odds.  The odds of your plane going down due to a double bird strike, getting pummeled by a car while crossing the street, cardiac arrest at the age of 50 or getting shot while in your high school gym are very low.  If it happens, then you just have to say “tough luck”…you did what you could and you got unlucky.  You could be a 95% favorite in a poker hand, but no matter what you do, there’s still a 5% chance that you will lose that hand.  There’s always going to be a chance that your opponent (in this case, the grim reaper) will suckout on you, drawing to one card.  No matter how hard you try, you will not be able control that.  The question is, will you live your life worrying about that 5% chance that your opponent will suck out on you, or will you play your hand in the best possible way and let the outcome fall as it may?

Randy Pausch wrote in The Last Lecture:

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”

This dude, Randy Pausch, was a professor diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in 2006.  He was given just a short time to live.  In the last few months of his life, he decided to give a “Last Lecture” at Carnegie Mellon talking about all of his life lessons.  The Last Lecture was turned into a book and his actual “last lecture” was a youtube hit.  He died in 2008.

I’m just saying…the stupid lady shouldn’t have felt the urge to come over to me to tell me to slow down.  It’s not going to work because there will always be someone who drives faster and more reckless than me.  The dude in my condo should just stop complaining about that damn trash.  It’s not going to work.  When you’re dealing with 300 people under one roof, there will always be one dummy who leaves trash in the trash room.  In my riding days, there was no way that I’d be able to tell every driver on the road to not hit me, but what I could do was ride a little safer, keeping a close eye on potential problems ahead.

Alright, I’m done with the philosophies of life.

So, I went to the Apple Store yesterday.  I was getting a little annoyed after waiting 20 minutes for someone to help me, even after making an appointment on Monday.  Finally, after 20 mins, they called my name.  The dude ended up giving me a brand new iPhone 3G and I was out the door in less than 10 mins.  Pretty cool.  I’ve been thinking about getting the new iPhone 3GS.  I’m not eligible to upgrade at a discounted rate, but I can upgrade for $499.  I was looking at Craigslist to see how much I can get for a brand new iPhone 3G and they’re going for about $380-$400.  All in all, it’ll cost me about $120 – $150 to upgrade.  That’s not too bad.  From what I can tell, the biggest difference between the 3G and 3GS is that I’ll get faster browsing speeds, an upgraded camera, and more drive space (16GB vs. 32GB).  Since I have this brand new iPhone now, I’m thinking that it might be best to upgrade now before it gets dinged up a little bit.  I think I’m gonna do it.

Alright…I’m done ranting for the day…thanks for reading, my one reader.

I could’ve used one of these panic buttons when I had that blowup last year:

The YM is flying and I am short…wtf, wtf!  Abort,ABORT….cover, cover, COVER. So silly.

Looks like Lee Murray is out of prison.

http://sports.espn.go.com/extra/mma/news/story?id=4284796

Lee Murray is the once, pretty good, MMA fighter who robbed a high security warehouse, filled with loot worth $92 million.  The robbery was the considered the biggest cash robbery in history.  Supposedly $40 million is still missing.  Murray was seeking asylum in Morocco and apparantly, his wish has been granted, since he’s now a Moroccan citizen.

ESPN 360 had a nice little documentary on him a while back.

http://www.bloodyelbow.com/2009/6/12/907329/lee-murray-mmas-criminal

And here’s the video of him fighting Anderson Silva back in the days:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlv8_jCikNY&feature=related

On Monday, while I was walking to the Apple Store, there was a guy walking in front of me, whom I’ve never met before, that  for some reason, I just wanted to kick his legs out.  Have any of you felt that way about someone that you’ve never met before?  There was something about the dude that just rubbed me the wrong way and I didn’t know why.  Maybe the way he walked or the way that he was dressed…or something.  All I was thinking was how fun it’d be to kick his legs out, sweep the legs, if you will, but since I’m a non-violent person, I knew it wasn’t going to happen.  The dude had no clue what I was thinking.  As a matter of fact, he probably didn’t even know that I was walking behind him.  No clue.  So, as I was walking, I was thinking to myself, I bet you a million dollars that this dude is going into the Apple Store as well. Sure enough, he headed straight towards those Apple Store doors.  I was like, damn, now I really don’t like this dude. But in a shocking turn of events, the dude kindly opened the door for me and let me in first.  At that one moment, when we finally made eye contact for the first time (in a non-gay way), with him sweeping his left arm, motioning me to go into the store first, all of my thoughts of kicking his legs out and how much I disliked the dude, left me and I thought to myself, maybe this dude isn’t so bad after all. The moral of the story is, no matter how badly you want to sweep someone’s legs sometimes, it’s best not to judge the person, until you’ve made eye contact with him (in a non-gay way).

So, I’ve decided that I’m not going to play golf today.  I think I’ve played golf 11 out of the past 13 days.  Probably 20 out of the last 30 days.  I shot a 60 on the front 9 yesterday at Pleasant Valley because I just couldn’t get my swing plane in line.  So frustrating.  I did shoot a little better on the back 9, but god dammit, 60 is a SHOW.  I think it’s time to go back to the swing doctor.  Whatever I’m doing wrong is not going to fix itself.

I didn’t realize that I had to make an appointment with the Genius Bar at the Apple Store, so I gotta go back today to get my mute switch fixed.  Pretty stupid if you ask me.  They should’ve told me that over the phone, when I called customer support.

So my Adidas golf bag, which I bought last year, the strapped are falling off.  Apparently, they have a 2-year warranty on all golf bags, so I decided to call them up yesterday.   Adidas.com only has one customer support phone number listed, so I called it.  I shit you not, but I called a total of nine numbers because they kept telling me that I had the wrong department.  What a show.  It was a little bit humorous actually because one after another, the customer support agent would tell me to call another number.  I know that Adidas is a pretty big company, but there’s gotta be a way to make things easier for the customer, right?  I imagine that I’m not the only one who’s had to call their customer support and talk to 8 different agents.  At the end, I was told that all I had to do was bring the bag back to an authorized Adidas reseller and they would file the return with Adidas.  It took me about 30 minutes to make all of those calls, and 30 seconds to actually get the answer that I wanted…  Reminds me of HP customer support….or e*trade…

The markets…my currency shorts are just about breakeven now.  I’m thinking about converting some more.  I’ve got 2000 GBP and 3000 euros now, which is about $8,500 USD.  I’m still just kinda waiting here with the rest of my money…my plan is to go long, then short.  Ultimately, I think that we will retest these recent lows, sometime late in the year/early next year.  I think that we may even break these recent lows, sometime next year.  I’m not hating on the bullishness of the markets, but all signs point to an extended consolidation here…1-3 years.  I think Pristine.com refers to this setup as “stage 4″.

Gotta go…my Genius Bar appointment is in 30 mins.  I’m gonna see if I can find that dude and thank him for his kindness (in a non-gay way).  I will make no mention of wanting to kick his legs out.

I just read this review on the Cirage CMC1000:

http://the-gadgeteer.com/2009/06/12/cirago-multimedia-center-review/

Doesn’t look good.  First off, it’s not a NAS…and you can’t write files greater than 4GB onto the drive via USB without mounting the drive to your PC…and it doesn’t play mp4/h.264 files…and no 1080p.  That’s poo poo.

Upgraded my iPhone 3G to version 3.0 this weekend because the Dev team also released the jailbreak software called redsnOw.  I haven’t noticed anything dramatically different in the new 3.0 version.  Just a couple of search features.  Oh yeah, I was also able to get tethering setup with the hack.  No MMS yet, but the tethering definitely works.  Too bad I paid $30 to PdaNet for the damn tethering software.  Oh well.

So, the vibrator switch on my iPhone broke off a few weeks ago.  I did a quick google search and apparently, it’s happened quite a bit to other users.  I called Apple this morning, and supposedly I can just walk up to an Apple Store and get the button replaced for free.  I’m gonna try to do that today.  I noticed that the new iPhones have metal switches.  Obviously it has been a problem.  The thing that sucks is that I’m gonna have to un-jailbreak my iphone before I bring it in because I think Apple might deny my servicing if they find that the iPhone was jailbroken.

Looks like the newest “push” version of Beejive is out.  The new AOL IM app with push is out as well.  Guess I didn’t really need to purchase Beejive.  I think I’ve probably spent over $100 on iPhone apps already.  I must say, Apple’s business model is so sick.  They turned their hardware/AT&T servicing contract into a software based application provider.  Who would’ve thunk that a cell phone could be that lucrative?  Cell phones were becoming so damn cheap that they were giving it away for free.  Now here comes the iPhone, and iPhone apps take over the world.  So sick.

I slept on The Ultimate Fighter 9 Finale this weekend.  I heard that it was a good one.  I was able to watch the last round of that Diego Sanchez vs. Clay Guida fight.  I don’t know how Guida bangs in every single one of his fights.  He must really enjoy being punched in the head.

Speaking about being punched in the head, apparently, Perez Hilton got popped in the head by Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas.  I couldn’t help but watch this video:

Watch the entire video…omg, I couldn’t help, but laugh.  He starts crying at the end….so damn funny.  Funniest video that I’ve watched in a long time.

Okay, I just finished un-jailbreaking my iPhone.  Time to take it to the Apple Store.

The McClellan Oscillator closed at -238 yesterday.  I imagine that we’ll get a short term surge here.  I’m still gonna give it a week or two here, but I think that we’ll get one more nice surge before a end of year retest of the lows.  I will eventually be positioning myself on the short side, but that’s still another month or so out.

I think I’m ready to start putting my money to work now.  First long, then longer term short.  On the long side, I will be getting some euros and GBP, maybe some gold…and some double index longs (QLD, SSO, IWM).

Can’t believe that it’s Friday already.  I played golf every day, but one, this week.  Today’s round will be 7 out of the last 8 days.  I had my bestting putting day yesterday with only 27 putts.  I still shot a 92, but that’s only because I tried “something new” with my driver on two holes.  Of course, I lost two balls on those two holes.  Then, it took me two shots to get out of the bunker on two separate holes.  Those damn lost strokes add up, which is why I still can’t break 90 consistently.  As a matter of fact, I am having a very tough time breaking 90 in general.  I’m a little bitter considering how much golf I play.  My handicap is going down though.  If I can get down to the low teens by the end of the season, I will be happy.  I’m at 16.8 right now.  A little bit hurt-ing.

I’ve been watching the US Open all morning.  Tiger’s at +4 today.  I think he’s supposed to tee off again sometime this afternoon.  Don’t sleep on the live stream at usopen.com.

I was also watching the Patrik Antonius and Tom “Durrrr” Dwan matchup on Full tilt Poker this morning.  They were 4-tabling $300/$600 PLO.  It looks like Antonius is stuck almost $800k after being up a half a mil.  With the challenge about 30% complete, it may be a battle all the way down to the wire.  It was pretty sick how much money they had at the tables:

At one point, Durrrr had close to a million dollars at one table.  Seeing that they start with $40,000 on each table, it’s safe to assume that Antonius was getting  absolutely crushed at that one table.  With that said, Antonius was actually sitting with almost $400k to $500k at two other tables.   I wonder how much money these two actually have.  I imagine that they both have at least $6-10 million in their accounts at FTP.  Sick.

I shorted some euros and gbp this morning.  Just converted some of my USD into two short positions.  I am intermediate term bullish on both the euro and gbp, but I think we’ll go down in the short term.  Just looking to make a few hundred from the conversion.

Other than that trade, I’m just still waiting.  I think that we will go higher in the intermediate term here, so I’m planning on buying the next dip here.  I’ll be looking for a short term double bottom.  It may take a week or two to develop.  Intermediate term, I think we’ll have one more big run higher, then a prolonged pullback to retest the recent lows to end the year.  That’s kind of what I see at the moment.  I don’t think the bulls will be able to get away with the continued strength without a move lower first.  We’ve had a pretty big drop starting October 2007 and moves like that don’t just end.  There will be consolidation to fix the major drop and eventually we’ll get back to the upside.

I’ve been meaning to post some of these pictures taken from my iphone for a while now.

On my way up to AC last month and there were “for rent” signs everywhere.  I’m noticing the “recession” hit as hard in the city, but in little towns in Delaware/NJ, I’m sure that the recession is hitting hard, as seen by these “for rent” signs.

Further proof that golf is the Devil’s game.  I got 6-6-6 on my first three holes at Potomac Ridge last weekend.

I was driving the other day and some dude had a Starbucks cup glued to his bumper.  It looks like he forgot to take it off of his car, but I’m pretty sure that it was intentionally glued there because the damn cup didn’t fall off when he drove off.  I don’t understand why he would do that.  What happens when it rains?  Maybe he put some Scott Guard on it or something?

Crazy eyed stuff horse at my buddy’s place.  Who the F would buy something like this?

That about it for now.  I’m watching Phil walk up to the 9th hole right now and he’s getting a standing ovation.  As much as I would love to see Tiger win this thing, I think I would like to see Phil win this thing a little more.

Tim-beeeerrrrrrr:

F Tim Sylvia.  He sucks anyways.  I’m glad he got KTFO….Ray f’in Mercer.  It was reported that he weighed in at over 300 lbs, which is 35 lbs over the heavyweight limit.  Basically, they’re saying that he didn’t train for the fight.  I also read something about him not wanting to fight in the UFC anymore because “the money is a lot better in boxing”.    Do it for the love of the sport, do it for the fans (e.g. wanderlei), but when you do it all for the money, you deserve to get the KTFO.  It’s also been confirm that he’s been pulled from the next Affliction show in 60 days.

I’m glad that MMA is back in full force here.  It seems like up until a few weeks ago, we hadn’t had a good card in months.  In the past three weeks, we’ve gotten to see Uriah, Wanderlei, Franklin, Mirko, Lyoto, Rashad, Yamamoto, Hughes, Serra, and even Canseco!   UFC 100 is on July 11th.  The return of Brock Lesnar is gonna be silly.

So, I went to Arby’s for lunch yesterday.  I think I’m gonna have to reorder my “best fast food fries” top 5 list:

1. McDonald’s
2. Wendy’s
3. Arby’s
4. Burger King
5. Fudruckers

I can’t stand Chik-fil-a’s waffle fries and 5 guys “peanut oil” fries are a little bit hurt-ing.

So, the markets.  I think my trading buddy is long here.  That’s the last that I heard from him at least, which was last week.  There was a McClellan Oscillator bearish divergence, which is usually a good indicator of a intermediate term trend change.  To be honest, I am thinking about buying on this dip, but I’m thinking that it’s probably the wrong thing to do.  The McClellan Oscillator closed at -155 yesterday, which is nearing oversold territory.  If we close below -200, then I will go long for a trade, to see if we can bust out above these recent highs.

I’ve always known that I’ve had the most problems in strong trending markets.  Since the beginning of March, we’ve had a strong trending market to the upside.  I’ve done pretty much nothing since then.  I really want to do something.  I’m just really not sure what to do.  It’s kind of annoying actually.  So many options, but yet I can’t find a damn thing to play?  You know what…I think I’m gonna convert some of my USD into euros and/or GBP.  I follow the currencies daily and we’ve had a pretty strong rally over the past few months (i.e. dollar going down, GBP and euros going up).  I’ll post some charts soon, but I’m looking to go long on the next pullback.  Problem is, it may take a few weeks to develop.

Don’t sleep on the Confederations Cup over the next few weeks.  US vs. Italy yesterday.  I missed the game, but I heard that it was a good one.  US vs. Brazil on Thursday at 10am.  I love watching Brazil play.  Their one touch passes are amazing.

Well, time for some golf…for the fifth straight day.  I need to work out a few kinks in my swing, so I’m gonna try to hit the range a little early.  US Open starts on Thursday.  Definitely one of my more favorite golf tournaments of the year.  Probably only second to the Masters.  Say what you want about watching golf, but when Tiger’s in it, golf is as exciting as any basketball game…probably not even close to NFL, but definitely basketball…or maybe even hurt-ing baseball (only during the world series though).

Didn’t particularly like my hand with two other players calling, but can’t fold right?

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4357044

With a set or two pairs and a flush draw, I’m only a slight favorite to win.  Good thing is the one player only had 3 outs and the other player was drawing to a chop, with no backdoor flush draws…lock it up.

Played some golf yesterday.  Won myself a new box of Pro V1s.  Didn’t play particularly well, but good enough.

Watched The Hangover last night.  Funniest movie I’ve seen in a long while.  Watch it if you haven’t already.

Don’t sleep on UFC 99 at 3PM EDT today.  Silva vs. Franklin.  Kongo, Swick, Marcus Davis, and MIRKO.  Pretty stacked card.  It’s gonna be in Germany, hence the mid-day start time.  I’ll probably catch it on replay tonight via newsleecher.

I bought this Western Digital Media player a few months back, but the damn thing doesn’t have a hard drive or wireless access to it.  Pain in the ass.  Now, I see that they have this thing:

Cirago CMC1100 1 TB Multimedia Center.  I want one of these.  It’s got HDMI, wireless, and 1TB of hard drive space…Lock it up.

Just moved my blog over to godaddy.  I used to do all of my own hosting, but it just got to be too much of a pain in the ass because the server would go down occasionally, and one thing or another would fail and it was just no good.  Godaddy charges $6.99/month for Deluxe hosting, which allows you to install as many websites as you want on the damn thing.  It’s pretty money.  Not to mention that they offer a ton of features for ASP and ASP.net users.  I also get 25 mysql databases, which is what I use.  Wordpress officially works on the windows hosting plan now, so I decided to make the switch.

The only downside to godaddy hosting is that it’s shared hosting, which means that there are multiple sites hosted on the same godaddy server.  Their servers usually have more then enough juice to handle all of the load, but I noticed that sometimes there’s a lag while trying to access my websites.  It could be anything causing these “lag” problems.  I’m about 99% sure that I’m not causing the problems, but with shared hosting, it sucks because if someone else has bad code (doesn’t close db connections, endless loops, or something like that), then everybody on the damn server suffers.  I definitely notice that the lag happens more often than not.

The alternative to shared hosting is to have a dedicated server.  Unfortunately, it costs an arm and a leg to have dedicated hosting.  Only bigger sites really need it.  Or sites that require more hard drive space or bandwidth.  This hurting little blog only has an average of about 40-50 visitors per day, so the dedicate dhosting is not really an option.  Hah.

I ended up paying $171 for three years of hosting.  I have two godaddy accounts now.  The other one is hosting a few other sites of mine, including boogster.com.  I’m gonna use this new account to host this blog and boogspace.com and perhaps some other things.  All-in-all I am paying about $14/month in hosting fees.  This is so very much nubbins…I don’t know why I waited so long to have all of my sites hosted on with real hosting companies.  It doesn’t even make sense to host your own shit these days because it’s so cheap to have someone else host it for you.

I haven’t played much online poker lately, but I did get in a few sessions over the past few days.  Watching all of these WSOP tourneys on bluffmagazine.com is making me a little bit eager to get in on the action.  I played in a few WSOP satellites yesterday morning and realized that I just don’t have the patience to play in those things.  They were cheapy ones, but even still, I just can’t sit there and grind it out in a tourney.

It looks like Full Tilt and Poker Stars is having their WSOP guaranteed tourneys this coming Sunday.  Full Tilt is having a 150 seat guaranteed tournament and Poker Stars is having a 200 seat guaranteed tournament.  I think the buy-in to those tourneys are $370 and $515 respectively…don’t quote me on that though.  The winners get a $10k main event seat and some travelling funds.  Every year I tell myself that I’m gonna give it a try to get into the main event, but I always end up not wanting to go through the grind.  This year is no different.  I can only attribute this lack of interest to not really wanting it bad enough.  Maybe one day I will play in the main event…

Here’s a chart of my online poker playing since I got the holdem manager software:

As you can see, I made a triple top and busted free recently.  Go with the flow right?  Buy, buy, buy.  To tell you the truth, I am getting bored of playing.

Not sure if any of you have been following the online gambling eCheck saga, but if you haven’t heard, Full Tilt Poker and Poker Stars have both stopped the processing of online eChecks because it looks like the federal government froze the bank accounts of the online echeck processing companies.  What a dagger.  Why can’t those bastards just leave us alone?  Supposedly, $30 million has been frozen.  None of the customer’s money is frozen, but it seems to have made a lot of people nervous about depositing and withdrawing money from the sites.  I’m pretty sure that credit cards and bank wire transfers still work, so the game’s not over yet.  And supposedly, Full Tilt is gonna bring the eCheck option back online soon.  Not quite sure how they’re gonna do it, but that’s what  the plan is.

What a show.  It’s friggin POKER, for god’s sake.  Poker is a game of skill, youngen.  You put a poker pro on a table with all of these government donkeys and they’ll realize quickly that poker is a game of skill.

Stock market wise, I haven’t done anything.  I had 1000 shares of UCO and 500 shares of QLD last week, but I sold out of them on Friday morning or something like that, I think.  Held them for about a day and broke even.  If I would’ve held, I’d be up over a thousand now, since UCO is trading above $14.  You know, I just realized that I looked at the chart wrong…the McClellan Oscillator did not close at +223.  That was the weekly chart that I was looking at.

I did get an email from my trading buddy this morning:

“Nice breaking out above 1875 and 950….”

I think that it’s safe to assume that he is long here.  My only problem with going long here is that the McClellan Oscillator is forming bearish divergence here.

So, we’re either forming a top here or we’re in for a longer run than what is expected.  The bearish divergence in the MO could also mean that the market is very strong here.  If you look at July 06 all the way to February 07, we went straight up while the MO made lower lows, so it’s possible.

Every time I want to do something, I’m like, F…it’s too late, just wait it out. I have a feeling that a lot of people are thinking the same thing.  Perhaps we will stair-step higher for the next few months, then bulldoze to the downside?  So what do I do?  Enjoy the ride and take the quick gains?  I might just do that.  I think John Carter would probably recommend buying at the 8EMA and sell when it closes below…  I’m out …for now…

BTW…here’s a parting gift:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttZeH7zNU8M

I hate people who are always in my way. I decided to get some lunch at the driving range today. I order a burger, fries and drink. As I’m about to fill up my soda from the fountain, a six foot and change dude steps in front of me and starts filling up his drink. I’m like alright…no biggie. Once he fills up, he looks around, like an idiot, searching for a lid for his cup. The lids were behind him, so instead of getting out the way to let me fill up, he leaves his cup there and gets the lid from behind the both us. I’m still waiting. Finally, slow as molasses he finishes and I go fill up.

Then I go over to the counter to get my lid, straw, napkins and other crap. As I reach for a lid, he reaches for a straw, which was right below the lids. One of the cardinal rules of manhood is to always wait for the other guy to finish reaching before going in for fear of accidentally touching hands. This dufus obviously violated the rules of manhood.

So as I’m getting the other stuff like napkins and ketchup, the dufus who is unnecessarily taking up pretty much all of the counter space blocks me. So I try to go around him and sure enough, tall dipshit reaches again. Finally I’m like, I will wait for tall dufus dipsh*t to finish before going any further. Of course he takes his merry old time.

What a dagger. Of all the people that annoy me the most, it’s the ones who are clueless that top the list. I can guarantee you that this dude is the same type of dude who drives 50mph in the fast lane and the one who takes the urinal next to someone without leaving a one urinal gap. Absolutely clueless. I wanted to machida kick his jawbone so bad.

Btw…I just sold everything that I bought yesterday. MO at +233. See the indecision? I’m out.

Yeah, I stayed up to watch the finish.   I’m such a loser.  Who watches poker for 8 hours?

After the win, he’s like I bought into the next tournament…is there anything I need to do [before I leave]? He wanted to get out of there to play in another tourney, so funny.  Sick thing is that he won $3 mil in prop bets.  Supposedly, Eli Elezra bet him $1.2 mil for his $500k that he wouldn’t get a bracelet, which was his biggest bet.  I think Negreanu has him for $200k.  Donkeys.