One year ago today: April 26, 2019, personality hardly matters.
Five years ago today: April 26, 2015, already a rebel.
Nine years ago today: April 26, 2011, I miss my hobby.
Random years ago today: April 26, 2009, aluminemia.
Florida reasserts itself as the home of the flat tire. The state has millions to hand out to illegal immigrants and minorities, but not to fix the roadways. Here’s the scooter tire undergoing repair with green slime. Visible are the stem and compressor. The situation is so bad, I allocate $18 per month for repairing flat tires. This includes the repair kits, but not replacement tires so I’m already in the hole for 2020. And don’t waste your money on “yellow” popcorn. Around a third of the kernels never pop.
Some of you may recognize this button phrase from years ago. This morning, as we went to log on, a new version of the software activated. Guess what. Every change we suggested was implemented, and the accompanying instructions listed the steps in the same order as the list. There were several referrals to “some customers”, but consider this. I was at the Zoom meeting, I was the only one who mentioned the software and the situation, and the Reb & I are the only plural membership. Ha, they did everything but mention us by name. The tail wagging the dog? And you should see the big fat button.
Mind you, their reaction to my prompts was knee-jerk and they still didn’t get it right. They’ve got redundant number displays and misleading titles. What is a “symbolic drawdown”? There is also a field with two names, Starting Lot Size and Net Position. Nobody seems to know what it is so I have embarked on stepping through every pair of numbers that appear everywhere on the website to find which one is 0.16% of the other. There are 36 such pairs located so far. I think what it is could be the maximum amount of your account a given transaction will risk on a given trading pair. If so, they should call it something more descriptive.
During the plumbing process (comparing all possible ratios) I came across a number of interesting relationships. I found many more that are quite useless. The designers have plainly never read my definitive but largely unrecognized work on report design. I describe the elements of a proper report and, equally importantly, the reason for each element. For example, why the ONLY item that should ever appear in the upper right hand corner of any report is the date. Hint, it’s almost the same reason postcards have a “place stamp here” directive.
The reports are cluttered and the column widths not matched to the data. But most annoying is numbers placed at the bottom of columns that are not related. The single piece of information of supreme importance to most people, the profit or loss at the moment, is hard to find and unlabeled. I am able to step through the relevant ratios from an accounting standpoint and I see I could well be the first. These vital ratios are not even mentioned in the tutorials.
What’s happening now is the Reb has a phone app that alerts her of trade notifications, where I would have to regularly check the computer. (Way to go there, Auvoria, who has never heard of “You’ve got mail.”) The system works on “currency rings”, that is, currencies that tend to move against each other. The one in use now is Euro-Yen-Dollar. Because I am now able to go into each transaction window and fine tune the setting, it is now only four hours into trading and we are nearing the 3% goal. Those of you interested, check back, as I intend to jump right on the restart feature should it kick in soon. I’ll be using the button I suggested.
My plan is to ramp it up by 2% increments, raising the “trailing by” feature in lock-step, so at any given moment it will preserve earnings to that point. I intend to figure out how it does that. But no holding your breath, these markets are very volatile. When trading opened, we were down fifty bucks.
Amazon forest fire.
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TMOR, I see a surge in views from the United Arab Emirates. Hello 1,002 readers, you are wise to be using Firefox, and a reminder that this blog does NOT represent the way the average American lives or behaves. This is mainly a PG13 daily journal of various categories of interest to myself. And that is why I’m going to now talk more about my new lean-to in the back yard. I’ve got the birdhouse poles in place. As for the roofing material, I’m looking at more cedar fence pickets. They are half the price of plywood and it looks okay from the inside in case I decide to leave it unfinished. Plus buying them in a small down doesn’t raise any eyebrows.
It was sad to cut down that grapefruit tree. Most of it is headed for the burn barrel. For siesta time, I also watched a video “Hammer of the Gods”. Set in Viking times in England. One thing about English forests, they are all so clean and easy to walk through. No snakes, mosquitoes, thorns, briars, or poison ivy.
ADDENDUM
Top of everybody’s suspect list is Google, which has tracked your entire browser history. There are others. Here is a list of the top 20 dangerous organizations and/or their software for invading your privacy, in alphabetic order. For instance, 23andMe has your DNA if any relation you have on this planet, dead or alive, ever had their genes tested. You may not have heard of most of these companies, but they’ve heard of you.
23andMe – the DNA database that tracks you, yes, they have yours.
Alphabet – information mining software for companies like Google.
Amazon – collects and markets your personal data
Apple – the leader against right-to-repair, a sinister shadow of their former self.
ByteDance – Chinese social media behind TikTok, deepfakes, revenge porn.
Cellebrite – will crack your device encryption for money. Based in Israel.
Disney – non-Christian propaganda conglomerate, copyright fanatics.
Facebook– disinformation, largest user data marketer
Huawei – biggest purveyor of infected integrated circuitry.
IBM – evil incarnate since 1911.
LiveRamp – credit scraping agency (Acxiom), the original ‘credit score’ people.
Megvii – the ID verification behind Face++ (facial recognition)
Microsoft – software snooper, anti-competitor, advanced facial recognition.
mSpy – collects browser history, records your cell calls.
Oracle – fake “cloud” company that keeps your files in its own storage.
Planatir – profiling software most likely to enforce social distancing.
Tesla – you only think it is just a driverless car.
The Grid – utility companies that “share” your usage.
Verizon – shifty billng, call tracking, largest opponent of net neutrality.
Vigilant – automated license plate readers, yes, they have yours.
This is not a complete list. The warrantless collection of private information is a $100 billion per year business and extends to every area of your life. There are thousands of databases tied into the Homeland security central collection computers. Every loan application, traffic accident, motel, veterinary visit, e-mail, prescription, jail visit, account inquiry, cruise, business permit, credit card, and fishing license goes right in there. Every vehicle registration, insurance policy, civil deed, and soon, every time you are required to present your new national ID card. You no longer “show” your ID, you “present” it for recording.
In most countries, you must show ID for everything from buying a bus pass or renting a bicycle. It was never intended the USA should become that way, but this is what happens when you have open borders. Never forget—the police need a warrant. These companies do not. A Canadian just invested $5 million in Corsight, an Israeli company that markets software that recognizes people wearing facemasks. So much for our friendly neighbors to the north.
(Social Distancing Level 99)
