November 12, 2003

Long time no write. It's been more than a month since I've written, although I've had the urge before today. Lots of things I'd love to talk about, but none of it seemed important enough. At the moment, though, I'm very tired because I stayed up late two nights in a row. When you get older, that can really begin to affect you. Last night it was because I was watching 'A Beautiful Mind' - a movie about John Nash, Princeton intelligentsia who decided to live with his paranoid schizophrenia rather than be medicated to the point of uselessness, and his wife who supported him and his decision. It's a good movie, if you like those types of movies (which I do). But, be aware that it's a longer movie and you should give yourself the time you need to watch it (> 2 hours).

The night before it was The Sopranos that had me up - I'm watching the series on DVD from Netflix (the link is from them). I just watched the first three episodes from the fourth season on Monday night. I'm impressed with the show. In the first season it looked like it was going to be formulaic, what with one person dying in each show. All I concentrated on earlier was who was going to be picked to be bumped off in each episode. It was a good idea to stop that later on. The show became a lot more meaningful.

Also, saw an innovative new service on the net, called Visitorville. It's a unique web visit data collection service with a SIMS-like interface, that shows your web traffic in real time, graphically, with people and buses (for referrers). Details on visitors show as people's passports, and your web pages each show as buildings, so you can watch people move from building to building. The only down-side is the price. They want $20 a month for the service. For a small website like mine (50 visits on a lucky month and free web page servicing), it makes no sense. I would recommend they change their business model to make room for the little guy like me if they want to succeed.

I've been watching a few stocks lately, to see if I can find any predictors to recovering companies. A while ago, I made a few predictions, and never acted on them. Putting your money where your mouth is is the only way you'll make money, of course. But I'm shy when it comes to actually putting up vs. shutting up. If any of my estimates come up, maybe I'll mention my stock choosing strategy. A little more research is warranted, though.