CHESSNOID

After I registered a complaint with the BBB, I received a call from the office of the president of time warner asking what was up. I explained the situation as described in my last post. I really didn’t think this person was who he said he was. He asked me to fax over a copy of my license instead of going down to the office. I complied then he asked if everything was better. Hell no! I missed the Frank Shamrock vs Cung Le fight which I read was very exciting. Cung Le broke Shamrock’s arm with a kick or something. Now that would have been a good MMA fight to watch where an undefeated up and coming long shot beats up a legendary fighter. Back to the Time Warner thing, the person supposedly from the Presidents office then emailed me an offer for 12 months free Showtime. I like that idea but am really disgusted with the way the company handled that situation with a loyal customer. I think it might be a good idea to keep the complaint on BBB so if others run into the situation where they are denied service, it will be on record. I do like the Bribe they are offering but it doesn’t cost them anything and it doesn’t make the situation right. I guess I will think about it for a day or two.

I recently watched a couple of good movies that were sleepers at the cinema. I saw Hitman which was really a good action movie. I didn’t recognize any of the actors in it and had no expectations, so I was pleased to watch this fun popcorn movie. I definitely recommend watching it. I believe it is based on some video game I have never played. Then I saw another movie called Awake about people being put under but being consciously awake during their operation. This movie made me squirm through the operation. Jessica Alba and Lena Olin starred in this movie. Again, another good popcorn movie. Then I saw the Bee animated movie. I thought this was just going to be corny, but I really like Seinfeld’s humor. The movie was actually better than I expected. So I saw 3 great popcorn movies. Incidentally, I had signed up again with Netflix because of their selection and just now cancelled my blockbuster account. Blockbuster did provide me with good service and I received the movies promptly. The only issues I had were they don’t carry a big foreign film selection and for some unknown reason they shy away from R and NC rated movies.

I have relaxed my TV viewing from last season. I didn’t watch the last apprentice series and I am not into the new Bachelor or Dancing with the Stars shows. I do still watch the late night shows for the humor but that’s about it. There is this one great show about MMA on HDNET that just highlights different MMA shows throughout the country. Bas Rutten is the host of the show. He is pretty funny and I actually have DVDs with all his career fights.

I remember when I first started blogging I was really into the social networking and reading as much as I could about blogging. I wanted to become good at doing it. I got my blog ranking up to Google PR 4 and my technorati rating up to 230 at one point. I did the viral linking, and learned about monetizing. I never really implemented it. I noticed that most social networks and many blogs are concentrated on this purpose. Even though I wasn’t really into the making money part of blogging, those bloggers who posted about making money did explain the strategies they used to increase their traffic. This was one of the things I was interested in. After I was able to get up to 20,000 hits through stumble upon in a few days, I was actually able to generate traffic on a regular basis. Anyways, I think I lost focus on what I really what I wanted to do with my blog which is just to write about my own observations about my life and life in general and give back to the online community by sharing my experiences. I must admit I have met many wonderful and generous people through this blog and reading other blogs. I don’t partake much in the social network aspect of blogging anymore, but that was definitely a great learning experience. If you are starting a blog, I would recommend the ones I have listed in my sidebar. They are all pretty good.

Now the stock market did close up on a positive note today, even if the quarter was terrible. According to CNN.money, the first quarter ended:

The Dow lost 7.6% in the quarter, the S&P 500 gave up just short of 10% and the Nasdaq lost just over 14%.

Stocks have tanked this year on worries about a sluggish economy and corporate earnings amid the fallout in housing and the credit markets. Significant information about the economy is due later this week, keeping the concerns front and center.

Now those are some ugly returns especially in a 3 month period. Again, I am all cash and waiting for the market to flatten out. I have been reading the stockcharts and trying to do some technical analysis to figure out the trends. So far all the trends in the overall market are still pointing down. Even though I was an avid dollar cost averaging investor, last year I saw the signs even though the market was still going up. I basically avoided the short term losses. This actually goes against the dollar cost approach. However, if you can avoid the downtrend and jump back in when the market is flat, I think you can maximize your overall returns. Many articles I have read always approach investing to be long term and argue that if you missed out on the best 10 days or whatever, you would have an overall lower return. This is actually true and makes sense not to time the market. But if you also missed the worse 10 days or whatever, you can also maximize your overall returns to be higher. Basically it is the same argument just reversed.

Now my fake account at UpDown closed the month up. I was invested in reverse ETFs. I have put in automatic sell orders so I don’t watch the market through out the day. I was down today about $4,000 on my million dollar play portfolio. I closed for the month of March at $1,083,249.03. Supposedly, the site pays you if you beat the S&P 500. I don’t really know how much they pay you but I will blog about it as soon as I find out. Last month I was about $2,000 and was awarded 36 cents or so. The exact numbers escape me, but I think it is in one of my previous blog posts.

As far as the Treasury and Federal Reserve wanting to expand their powers, I think it is a bad idea. They have sucked in their performance. If they were at any job, they would have been fired for sucking so bad. They created this housing bubble that turned into the housing bust. The moves they have to cut rates is only contributing to the global recession and inflationary pressures that many consumers are experiencing in many aspects of their lives. Why would we want an organization to have more powers when they have literally mucked up the economy. This Fortune magazine article summarizes their recent performance:

“The Fed as a bank regulator has done a very poor job overall,” says Joseph Mason, a professor at Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business in Philadelphia. “There are tremendous risks of using [the credit crunch] as an excuse … for an umbrella regulatory structure.”

Skeptics contend that under former chief Alan Greenspan, the Fed played two roles in inflating the housing bubble that has since burst with such serious consequences for the financial sector. It’s well accepted that Greenspan helped to fuel the housing bubble by cutting interest rates as low as 1% back in 2003, and keeping them there even as the economy began to recover.

But beyond that, some criticize Greenspan’s Fed for failing to curb a sharp decline in mortgage underwriting standards that helped fuel the price run-up, particularly in hot markets such as California and Arizona. Indeed, Greenspan appeared at times to be defending some of the high-risk loans that were being abused by lenders and mortgage brokers.

This would be like voting for Bush for a 3rd term if he could run again and rewarding him for doing a SUCKY! job all around by keeping him in office. I don’t mean to call you an idiot if you voted for him the last 2 times, but in retrospect I am sure if you could go back in time you wouldn’t vote for him. Of course, if you had the opportunity vote for him again, then yes you are a true idiot and in all likelihood will vote for the new Bush called McCain. This also means you want the war to continue in Iraq and don’t want to bring our troops home from the war.  This does affect our struggling economy too.  If you haven’t noticed or forgot, we  are in a recession.  If you don’t know how the 2 are connected, read my old posts or just google it.

One last thing, my comments are turned off.  This is now a read only blog and I hope you enjoy what you read. Cheers!