Stock Market 101

Stock Market 101

Once upon a time in a place overrun with monkeys, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each.

The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to diminish, they became harder to catch, so the villagers stopped their effort.

The man then announced that he would now pay $20 for each one. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. But soon the supply diminished even further and they were ever harder to catch, so people started going back to their farms and forgot about monkey catching. The man increased his price to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so sparse that it was an effort to even see a monkey, much less catch one.

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys for $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on his behalf.

While the man was away the assistant told the villagers. 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has bought. I will sell them to you at $35 each and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each.

The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys. They never saw the man nor his assistant again and once again there were monkeys everywhere.

Stronger

I bought a bike back in June and have been riding it around downtown ever since, mostly to get to work and back home. I can now get to work in about 10 minutes, faster than if I ride the bus.

Two weekends ago, Lyndsay and I did a cycling tour of the Sunshine Coast. We took the ferry to Langdale on Saturday morning, then cycled about 30 km to Sechelt. The purpose of the trip was to attend a wedding reception, and unfortunately we missed most of it due to the longer than anticipated time it took to get to Sechelt.

Because it was starting to get dark after the reception and we would be riding on a highway with no streetlights, we threw our bikes on a shuttle and took the shuttle to Roberts Creek (about halfway back to the ferry), stayed in a B&B overnight, then rode the remaining 15 km back to the ferry terminal on Sunday. We went up and down many hills. I looked at Google Map's terrain prior to the trip and noted all the hills I might encounter, but those were only the super-big inclines and declines. There were many smaller ones that I didn't see on the map.

Here's a map of the Saturday trip, which took about 4 hours. The Sunday return trip took about 1.5 hours.

Since that trip, I've noticed that it's just a bit easier to bike around, especially going up the same hill on my way home from work. I don't have to gear down as far to avoid fatiguing myself.

In just over a week, I'll be moving out of my home and living in West Point Grey. My plan is to bike to work in the morning (~45 min and mostly downhill) and ride the bus back home with the bike on the bus' bike rack, at least for as long as the weather holds out.

Sold!

I sold my place. Subjects were removed last Friday and I'll be moving out at the end of September.

Time to sell

I'm pulling the trigger and selling my home. It's unfortunate that I never really had a chance to fully enjoy living downtown with being sick, but property values are on the decline and it's looking like I'll be stuck with this place for a long time if I hold on to it any longer.

The MLS listing should go up next week with open houses the following weekend.

Four years in the making...

Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay opens today.

Great news

I had an appointment with my neurologist today for a nerve conduction test. The previous test was Mar 28 last year.

The results showed about a 33% increase in the speed in which my nerves conduct pulses of electricity in my legs and arms. One number went from 3.2 to 4.2 in my right leg, but I don't know what the unit of measure was. She was saying that the speeds recorded are about average for the entire population (which includes older people). Therefore, it's likely that for my age, I should still see more improvement. I don't have any statistics from before I got sick, so there is no specific benchmark to compare against.

This is still great news and shows that I've had a lot of nerve regrowth in the last year.

Flooring

I have some water damage on my hardwood floor from a few weeks ago when I flooded the bathroom. I've been looking at my options, and have been considering replacing the entire floor. Since I moved in, I always believed that my living room floor is a laminate and never thought anything more of it, and I was planning on going out tomorrow to buy new replacement laminate. However, I looked more closely at the flooring tonight, and it's actually engineered hardwood. It has a top layer of real wood 2 mm thick on top of a 10mm thick backing. It appears that it might be glued to a 1/4" plywood base. It's hard to tell if it's floating or glued down.

I'm definitely not replacing this with laminate, and so now sanding and refinishing the floor might be an option to get rid of the warping. I never liked the colour of the floor anyway, so this might be an opportunity to stain it darker.

This is also an opportunity to get rid of the electric fireplace and replace it with a wall-mounted TV. I already pulled the fireplace out of its enclosure and just need to remove the enclosure and finish the wall behind it. I've attached a picture of the enclosure without the fireplace insert. The wall behind is finished, as is the floor. The enclosure is glued on the inside and caulked on the outside to the wall, so I will need to fill any damage to the wall from removing it, and then paint the wall the beige colour seen around the enclosure. I still have some paint left from when I painted the apartment in 2006. Once the fireplace enclosure is removed, I'll gain about 5-6 sqft of space that is presently wasted by something I'm only using as a stand for my stereo.