One year ago today: July 14, 2019, lightning bass.
Five years ago today: July 14, 2015, auction, my eye.
Nine years ago today: July 14, 2011, re-learning to drive a car.
Random years ago today: July 14, 2017, 1,067 miles.
3.990%. That’s off to a good start. That is so far this week in Forex trading. Don’t worry, the minute I start using real money, the entire system will take a swan dive. For now, I’ve gotten used to the routine and in the end, it is more worry than work. And I handle worry quite well in the scheme of things. There is a delay mailing money these days. Everything else (like personal letters) gets through, but up to a two week delay on business mail. Sure, it could be the state snooping again, but I doubt they would play their hand over my $600. For lack of anything better, here is a picture of two megabytes back in 1966. Can I recall 1966? Yes, I had successfully started my first band, called “Ides of March”, with the codicil that this had nothing do with the English band of the same name formed four years alter.
There was no journal in those days, part of that is explanable that there was no secret of private place to keep such a thing. And forget locking anything up, that didn’t work either. But I remember my siblings, so dull and unread they gossiped around town that I was “starting” a band called “The Ideas of March”. I let them carry on with that. That band played out for two years before the band members decided they were smarter than me. They folded soon after I left, none of the members ever to play out successfully again. Those parts I recall. That was also the year I realized what I was up against resource-wise over getting ahead in the world, or you might say the point at which I realized without a massive input of good luck, I never stood a chance.
When you say that before you are old, people assume you don’t know what you are talking about. Knowing I would not be believed, I continued with my plan to build that I called “infrastructure”, thinking we’ll see who’s laughing in 20 years, even though it turned out to be more than 40. Computers were massive machines in university basements, there were no calculators, birth control required parent’s permission, most drunk drivers got off, and the electric bass, despite being around a while, was still not a major rock instrument. Many bands still had the double or stand-up bass, even Elvis didn’t go electric until the late 50s, so it is an amazing deal that less than ten years later, I was playing one. That’s like warp nine today.
This is also the era where the lingering misconceptions about the bass began and stuck. The most ridiculous is that the bass had to be bigger and heavier than a guitar, and that the bassist’s job was to “hold down” the music. It’s just my opinion but both are bull donkey. That electric bass sound is totally electronic, so the instrument should be as comfortable as possible. Weight contributes nothing to either the sound or the appearance of too many bass players. As for the bass role in a band, I see it as the job of the entire group to hold things down. Any member who relies on others is probably in the wrong field. By 1976, I had hung up the bass, but read and played a bit when I visited Harry. He had a small recording studio which produced demo tapes and nothing else.
Thus another ten years went by, off and on trying to find guitar players who would stay with it. By 1980, the guitar-player-as-hero trend was growing and was eventually totally cashed in on by Guitar Center. The closest I came to a playing regularly was with an idiot called Lance De Voss, who grasped the concept of bass and guitar playing in harmony instead of unison, but he was too wired most of the time and had that trait that dooms all its possessors. He thought he was cool, an early form of “kewl”. But I did not care, I was making twice as much money as all the band people I knew together in those days. Then one fateful afternoon in August 1987, these two guys at work said they wanted to form a band and had heard I played bass some.
Do I be shy, or tell you the facts? Okay, but only some of the facts. These dudes were dreamers, thinking they could practice enough to make a big splash. By then, I was a veteran of several successful band startups, and knew the odds. As for experience, on a scale of one to a hundred, they were maybe fives. The Reb appeared on the scene, she told me years later she thought me arrogant for saying the band had to play out in ten weeks or die. But I was right, I held things together long enough to do one gig that Halloween. We made a few dollars. It was evident that the Reb was the talented one, but keeping the band together fell 150% on me. So much for fond memories.
Picture of the day.
Norfolk Island convict cemetery.
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What’s this about another free check? So what if it is a trillion-dollar bail-out? I won’t live long enough to suffer the real consequences. The last check put the roof on my shed and got me the (still pending) shop vacuum. I was out there for three hours but it doesn’t show. I told ya because I was setting up the ladder, dragging planks, and discovering one of my 18V batteries just fried. Plus, the final 8 rafters were cut at the wrong angle. The mistake is just big enough that I have to re-cut them while they are up on the roof. No doubt the English have a proper cuss word for this situation. Since there are 22 rafters, over half will not match up. These face the neighbor’s back yard, so go figure.
And I got an e-mail from the Sheriff’s office saying that unless I confirm the scooter license plate is still stolen, somebody else could use the plate without knowing it is stolen. Let me get this straight. Somebody from Florida finds a Texas motorcycle plate, puts it on a vehicle, and does not know it is stolen unless I answer an e-mail? I hear a deep sucking noise. I’ll answer, but I am not sure how.
Surprise, the neighbor with the big work shed is a millionaire. We were discussing medical bills when the topic was broached. Turns out he thought I was the rich guy. I never thought one way or the other because he could have bought that property back when it was $20,000. All I knew is he was ex-military and his only job was as a book illustrator. That, and I noticed he never goes anywhere, never does anything, and thinks I’m a human dynamo. I’ll admit only to doing around fifteen hours of work to his one, and that includes all the time he rides around his lawn tractor. One telltale clue I missed was that he always has the newest of everything.
That weirdo AOC was miffed that Trump called her untalented “in many ways”. She claims that cannot be true because she was elected before she was 30. She plainly has Democrat blinders on. She is confusing being legitimately elected with buying votes by promising everything to everybody and making them pay for it later through taxation. That’s how communists run things. And no matter what they promise, there has never been a communist nation that wasn’t an oppressive dictatorship.
ADDENDUM
As the NYSE closed today, this weeks earnings stood at 5.687% for a total of 18.5% in the past three weeks. These a demo-dollars, and I still cannot recommend this business to a friend. So, let’s imagine you are not a friend so you can read on. Primarily, my warning is that the trading is nerve-wracking, I would not wish it on anybody I know. There is a lot of talk over having a flippant attitude toward losing money that in reality few people possess. The Auvoria software is just complicated enough that you always overlook something. The real money is in the trailing equity mode and this is not carefree. I’ll explain.
In trailing equity mode, you set two parameters. One, a percentage you are aiming for, and lower number that “trails”. Mine is set at 5% and 2, meaning once I’ve attained 5%, 3% of it is “locked in”. The software then begins to basically gamble to see what it can grab out of the market. I’ve been lucky three weeks in a row. But until you reach that setting, the stop-loss and other safety measures don’t work right, a couple weeks last quarter I was up 4.8% +/- and in the final hour of trading, nose-dived to -1.6%. And of course, nothing will make the market crash faster than when I put real money into it. But I’m prepared to lose, big difference from my early days in the stock market, where I once lost $88,000 in a day (my actual loss was $76,000 but I also lost my investment). That was in 1992 I think.
The two modes, fixed and trailing equity, are not carefree. Each trade has to be manually accepted, it is the law in the US of A, the land of the stupid laws. But it ensures people who lose can only blame themselves. The trades pop up by notification, but unless you have a smart phone, there is no alert. My lifestyle is long since adapted checking the computer regularly whenever I pass by day or night. Without this habit, the trades become a word I have begun to use, “fusty”. It is all to easy, due to leveraging, to find yourself approving enough trades to place your safety margin too low. If the market does not climb back, you could be in a position to have to pay for the loss, big time.
Fixed mode is somewhat easier, usually because your weekly goal is set lower, 3% is the norm. The trades seek that amount then shut down for the rest of the week. Trading begins 7PM my time on Sundays and I’ve had this happen as early as Monday noon. The trades are more conservative and take longer, so approval timing is not as critical. You have to decide which mode better suits your lifestyle. I’ve already learned to isolate the trades from the Reb other than covering the process when I’m away a few hours. I use both modes, trailing equity when I’m here, and fixed while I’m traveling. Both modes take time to learn, neither is ideal.
Under what circumstances would I steer you toward Forex trading? Never, unless I knew you had a fixed income or pension you could live on no matter what. But you can get into the market for a few hundred dollars, and trade with a few hundred. Mind you, less than a thousand is hardly serious, though I know of one lady whose been doing it for three years and is content with the pin money.
