Category: General

I spotted an Oscar Meyer ‘Wienermobile’  at the hotel next door here in Denver tonight. The first version was created in way back in 1936 by by Oscar Mayer’s nephew, Carl G. Mayer. Wikipedia says there are currently eight active Wienermobiles, six of which are the full-sized familiar models (the other two are the Mini and the food truck versions) with each assigned a part of the country. 

I watched the World Cup final’s overtime period while folding my laundry – dreading the arrival of a penalty shoot-out to decide who the champion would be.   But just then Mario Götze scored a goal, and that was all that the Germans needed to go 1-0 over the Argentinians.   The Germans are the world champions (weltmeisters) for 2014.  Götze was sent on only in overtime, and the first substitute to score in a World Cup final.

So the poor Brazilian soccer team made World Cup history today, and not in a good way, by losing in an eye-popping score of 1-7 to the German soccer machine in the semi-final match.

Sofrimento, frustração e perplexidade (Suffering, frustration and bewilderment) said a Brazilian newspaper – and kühl, nüchtern, effizient (translates to cool, sober and efficient, or would that be German for ‘cool, calm and collected’?), was the way a German newspaper summed up the German team’s efforts.

Well.  I hope the Brazilian coach, and the team will be OK.  Tennis player Boris Becker once said (he won Wimbledon at only 17 yrs old in 1985) : ‘When you are a young man, you are looking for your own identity, and winning is a way of expressing yourself. When I lost, I wanted to die. And because I thought in victory I became somebody, in defeat, it followed, I was nobody.’

I have a little break from the travel to Denver this week, and so I could go for a walk after my work was done today.  It was a beautiful summer day (79 °F/ 26°C) and I ended up at Volunteer Park at sunset.   I believe (I’m a music barbarian!) the group of musicians I found there was a wind quintet.   From Wikipedia :  a wind quintet, also sometimes known as a woodwind quintet, is a group of five wind players (most commonly flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon).  The term also applies to a composition for such a group.
Unlike the string quartet with its homogeneous blend of color, the instruments in a wind quintet differ from each other considerably in technique, idiom, and timbre.

I decided to take a Sunday afternoon drive today to the ‘east side’: the east side of Lake Washington, that is.  That is where the cities of Bellevue and Redmond, the home of Microsoft, are.  My timing was bad – or good – depending how one looks at it. As I approached the bridge, a warning sign said to prepare to stop.  The bridge had closed for some 30 mins due to allow for a draw span opening to let through sailboats and other vessels.  It’s the first time I actually stopped on the bridge – and it is definitely floating. While sitting in the car, one feels the small shifts that the pontoon underneath the road surface makes as it floats on the water.

Meanwhile, right next to the bridge to its north, a massive construction project is on-going. Two cantilevered piers have been completed on the east side, and there is one more to go.   This is to connect a new, replacement floating bridge, to the shore.  The new bridge will accommodate road traffic as well as a light rail line.

Here is an extract from the Declaration of Independence, signed by representatives of all thirteen founding states of the nation on July 4, 1776 :   .. we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. …  

I bought a Spirograph set last weekend and finally had some time to play with it today.  It brings back happy Spirograph memories!  I do have a few quibbles with this so-called ‘original’ Spirograph .. the original had 17 wheels (this one has 15) and two toothed racks (this one has one).  Yes, they threw in three additional geared shapes, but I don’t care too much for those. Finally, the felt-tip pens are terrible. I made the drawing below with a Parker Pen with a roller ball tip : much better.

We were supported to ‘boycott’ Belgian waffles* here in the USA today – a call also made by the premier purveyor of waffles here in the USA, the ‘Waffle House’ franchise.

*Because of the USA-Belgium soccer match – but per Wikipedia : What is known in North America as the ‘Belgian waffle’ does not exist in Belgium.  No single type of waffle is identified as a ‘Belgian waffle’ within Belgium itself, where there are a number of different varieties, including the Brussels waffle and the Liège waffle.

I did go down to the lobby to watch some of the USA-Belgium soccer match, then was stuck in a meeting when the three goals in extra time happened!  Belgium 2-1.  The USA played well, but the best team won, says people that know soccer.   Now can we go and have a waffle at a Waffle House?  I want one right now!

So here it is, the midpoint of 2014.   My firm’s ‘FY15’ (Fiscal year 2015) starts tomorrow! It’s warm and sunny in Denver.   Here’s a picture of the Brown Palace Hotel close to our office, and two graphics from Monday’s Wall Street Journal that I liked.

My neighbor has sold his house and is moving south to California.
It was raining now and again on Friday, but not so much that it interfered with filling up the ‘U-haul’ storage/moving boxes.

It’s the Big Day for the USA in the World Cup : we’re up against Germany, and we need at least a draw to go through to the next round.   What will German-born USA team coach Jürgen Klinsmann do?  ‘I will sing the German anthem because I am German, and the US anthem because it is beautiful’ he told a reporter.    Check out the flowchart below that showed up in my Twitter feed, credit due to Faux Pelini.

I watched the USA-Portugal game this afternoon, played in the city of Manaus in the middle of the Amazon in a controversial $300 million stadium.  (The city has no top-flight professional sports team, and Manaus is 4 hours’ flying from any other city).  

Anyway, as everyone was watching the clock run out on the match with the USA at 2-1, Ronaldo made a perfect cross-kick in literally the final minute. His teammate Varela scored a goal with a dive header to make it a 2-2 draw. Man!

Saturday marked the summer solstice for us here in the northern hemisphere of our spinning blue planet.

Here in Seattle it was sunny, but temperatures were still mild, barely making it to 70 °F/21°C.   Bryan, Gary and I sat outside soaking up a little sun, and Gary made a banana vanilla ice cream shake for us in his new blender.  

Here’s a little video clip as well .. Blend It!

So with the Dow Jones Industrial Average approaching 17,000 here in the USA, the questions for all of us (millionaires or not) about a pull-back – or worse – in the stock market remain.  Our Vampire Squid Investment Bank* wrote to its clients that it expects a ‘10% pull-back’.  Some analysts are pointing out though, that such a prediction really says nothing, since a 10% pull-back is quite possible – and even expected in a long bull-market. And are stock valuations ‘lofty by any measure’?  Well, the S&P 500’s price-earnings ratio is admittedly high historically.  But then we have the super long-term view from Richard Ross, Global Technical Strategist at Auerbach Grayson, shown on CNBC that says we may very well be breaking out of a 13-year sideways band and still go up, up, up. (Whoah). Fortune 500 companies sit on tons of cash, the Fed is not about to raise interest rates drastically, the economy is supposed to grow 3% this year, and demographics favor the USA (compared to other stock markets).   But then we have a student loan bubble here in the USA, and as always the peace in the Middle East is tenuous, or is it unraveling and turning into a full-blown crisis?   Better not to put all one’s retirement eggs in the stock market basket.  As always.  That has not changed.

*Referring to the famous quote about Goldman Sachs from the New York Times : ‘The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money’

My scheduled flights back to Seattle are now a half hour earlier.  As I get into the taxi to get home from Seattle airport at 10 pm, there is still a band of light sky on the horizon.  (The sun sets at 9.10 pm!).

I read about the problems that national parks in the western states here in the USA are having with mountain pine beetle infestations : it’s scary.  Mountain pine beetles attack several types of pine tree, including ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine, limber pine, bristlecone pine, Scotch pine and Austrian pine. Beetles seek out the oldest trees, preferring ones over 80 years old.  Thousands of years of instincts help the pine beetle locate the oldest, most stressed trees.  In the natural cycle, pine beetles are important factors in helping to maintain the health of a forest .. but this surely is too much of a good thing at work!

What can be done?  From the Colorado State University’s website : For a long-term remedy, thin susceptible stands.  Leave well-spaced, healthy trees.   For short-term controls, spray, cover, burn or peel attacked trees to kill the beetles. Preventive sprays can protect green, unattacked trees.

Train – the American pop rock band from San Francisco, that is.  They were at it, playing on a set-up stage for a street party crowd here in downtown Denver.  I stopped outside for a while, thinking I might hear them play ‘Drops of Jupiter’, but no luck.   It was late and I was tired.  Play the song on your iPad before you go to sleep, I thought. 

Here are some of my favorite lyrics from the song, about someone traveling very very far away, and the other person (a lover?) missing her.

From ‘Drops of Jupiter’ (2001) by Train
But tell me, did you sail across the sun?
Did you make it to the Milky Way to see the lights all faded
And that heaven is overrated?

Tell me, did you fall for a shooting star–
One without a permanent scar?
And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there?

Now that she’s back from that soul vacation
Tracing her way through the constellation, hey, hey, hey (mmm)
She checks out Mozart while she does tae-bo
Reminds me that there’s room to grow, hey, hey, hey (yeah)

Six of us had baba ghanoush, hummus and chicken kabob for dinner tonight at the Shish Kabob Grill.  It is across from the Colorado State Capitol here in Denver.  The casual sit-down restaurant is owned by a Syrian American family. A sign by the entrance says ‘Syrian Americans for a free Syria’ and another ‘Victory is near’ (meaning victory against the Assad regime). Even if that were the case (is it?), it’s going to be a long way back with parts of the country in ruins and the economy in a shambles.

So .. the World Cup 2014 has started!  Check out the evolution of the soccer balls from the early days through today’s high-tech soccer balls, from an article in the New York Times.  (Although the Jabulani ball of 2010 was harshly criticized for its fickleness and aerodynamics, says the article). Let’s hope the 2014 ball gets better reviews from the players.

Here is the link from the New York Times.

 

Bloomberg Businessweek writes in a story in the latest issue of a Chris Dancy here in Denver that collects information about himself : what he sees, what he does, what he thinks, what he eats eats .. from 10 devices he wears or carries, and 13 more in his home and car.  He started five years ago by archiving his tweets, so that he could search them (at the time Twitter did not allow searches); did the same with his Facebook posts, and eventually ended up funneling all his data in his Google calendar, the world’s most thorough, searchable diary.  (Hmm. Maybe I should zap my blog entries into a Google calendar?). According to Dancy, the proliferating array of information is full of unexpected correlations, such as measuring exactly how much TV and when one has watched it, monitoring and changing one’s diet – and so on.  Chris managed to lose 100 lbs as his first self-improvement project.  He left his job as IT director at a software company earlier this year to make full-time presentations about ‘data-assisted living’.

Today was the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, France.

I finished reading my book about another war, last night on the flight home : the Second Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa.  The fictional story revolves around a New Zealander called Gideon Lancaster that joins the British forces in the Boer War, and becomes a spy.  Soon, ‘the enemy’ and ‘betrayal’ became impossible to pin down in his mind.   Legendary Boer general Christiaan de Wet, and scheming to capture him, is also part of the story. (The general never was captured.  But his brother Piet de Wet who was also a successful Boer general, was captured by the British toward the end of the war.  He then became a member of the National Scouts – Boers serving with the British forces!).

It was madness (OK, all wars are madness) for the Boers to take up arms against the British Empire, of course.   We learned of Lord Kitchener’s ‘scorched earth’ policy in school : burning down farmsteads and slaughtering all the live-stock.  And during the later stages of the war, the British rounded up and isolated the civilian Boer population in concentration camps, one of the earliest uses of this method by modern powers.  To this day the United States Army uses case studies from the Boer War to teach ethics in combat.