Calling for the Democrats

I spent a couple of hours last night making phone calls to promote a meeting, next Saturday, that the county Democrats are having to promote the Health Care Reform bill. I'll finish it up, tonight.
I don't know how I get roped into these things. John also wants me to be the web master for the Democrat site. I'll have to learn a lot about setting up web sites but I could make a business out of it. Troy at the Co-op wants me to set up a site for him, as well.
I guess I have a small business going. I think I'll do it. Tomorrow I'll run by Vocational Rehab and see if I can get a small business grant. I think I'll have to make myself a business. Things, kind of, open up when you put yourself out there. Everyone thinks I'm a computer whiz just because I fix up old laptops and hang out at Internet Cafes.
On another topic, I called the investment contact at Delphi, today. He said that the most that I can hope to get from the bonds is $.32 on the dollar invested. That still is a major profit for me since I bought most of the bonds for $.01 on the dollar. I don't know how soon I'll see the money. They have to pay off their "bridge" lenders first. Those are the people who loaned them $7 billion to come out of bankruptcy. The bonds are still cheap so I guess nothing will happen very soon.
I'm running out of excuses. I'll have to mow the lawn. It's sunny now and tomorrow it's supposed to rain, again.
Later.

Delphi is coming out of bankruptcy

I uploaded a picture of one of the flower arrangements that you can find at the Co-op. A lady, who I call the "Flower Lady", leaves flower arrangements at all the tables. I appreciate them. They add a lot to the ambiance.
Well, there was an article in Yahoo about Delphi coming out of bankruptcy, today. Apparently, it will happen in the next 2 days. I hope that they decide to start paying the coupon on their bonds. Good things can happen.
Gold went up, today. If that had happened 2 weeks ago, I would have doubled my money. Oh well, you live and learn.
I asked Troy about working at the Co-op as the IT man. I don't know enough about spreadsheets to run their Point of Sales software. He told me that they are looking for someone to set up their web page. I think I could do it. I would just enroll on all the cheap or free services and use their simplest things. I'll ask Jason Trout if he thinks an ordinary person could set up a Web site.
The Democrats want me to set up a web site as well. Maybe I could teach myself to do that. It could be another source of income.
Talking about sources of income, I don't know if I mentioned that a psychologist in Iowa City wants me to go to weekly meetings for my gambling addiction. Since the VA would pay for my mileage, I would pick up an extra $500/month.
That leads me to talking about a way to make money while you are on disability. Going to meetings and having food and board and mileage paid. I have a friend who goes to a lot of meetings where she represents disabled people. She gets paid for mileage and food and board. The trouble is that your expenses will go up at the same time. She found that it wasn't worth it. The wear and tear on the car and the expense of eating out all the time diminished the profit from traveling all over the place.
The reason that I think I'll do well with the VA is that they pay $.41/mile. That is considerably more than other outfits. I'll try to get rides with other people, whose cars are nicer than mine. That should help my car last longer.
Later.

Sorry, no picture

I lost my memory stick, the other day. I loaded another form of Linux on this machine so I don't have any pictures to load, today.
Well, I lost most of the money that I put into the Newmont options. I waited too long to sell and I shouldn't have been in that in the first place.
I went to the VA last Monday. I talked with the shrink about going to a program for gamblers at a hospital in Brecksville, Ohio. He couldn't find anything about it, but he did know about a group being started at the VA hospital in Iowa, City. It turned out that I can get paid, mileage, to attend a weekly meeting. The VA pays $.41/mile. That comes to around $120 a week. It would be a welcome increase in my income.
The only problem is that my car may cost me more in repairs than I can hope to make in mileage.
Well, today was the day that Delphi is supposed to come out of bankruptcy. There has been no mention of it on the news. I was watching CNBC for several hours, today. It seems like a non-event.
The next important day for Delphi is the 15th of this month. I have 127 bonds that come due that day. If they pay their coupon I will make more than $5000, that day.
The next big day is November the 15th. I have over 400 bonds that come due then. It's also the first time that they can "call" those bonds. That means they could pay back $1000 for each bond that I hold. Good things could happen.
I'm not sure that they will because their prices haven't gone up yet. Normally the indication that good things are going to happen is that the price goes up. That hasn't happened yet, so nobody else thinks these good things are going to happen.
I've got 2 new, old laptops. They both have intermittant problem. One has a bad monitor or cable to the monitor. The other has a problem of turning itself off when booting. I think its a weak AC adapter.
I bought an AC adapter on Ebay and I'm looking for a video cable for the other one.
I gave Nate my good 9100. He has a friend who needs a laptop until he gets a new desktop. Apparently he is a student at Luther. This will get him by for a while.
Janelle will have to wait until I get a good 9500 working. She will be better off with a nicer computer, anyway.
I talked with Jason, yesterday. He looked at my blog and bookmarked it. I hope that he gets back to me with suggestions for improving it. We'll see.
I'm running out of excuses. I'll have to go home and mow the damned lawn.

I'm at Java John's, today. I'm waiting for Nate to finish his laundry and return for his Ipod, which he left here.
I've been watching gold all day. Last night it went up in Asia and Europe. It opened higher in New York as well. I wish that I sold in the first 30 minutes of trading. Newmont has been going down since then. I'm going to try to sell, again, tomorrow. It's tempting to hold until Friday, which is options expiration day. It will be very volatile, then.
That leads me to the topic of trading options. You are probably better off not doing it. The time factor works against you too much. Gold went through the roof, today, but I still didn't make any money. I made 2 mistakes when I got into the option contracts on Newmont Mining. The first was to buy a miner instead of the actual metal which I thought would go up. I could have bought an option on the GLD ETF. That's an ETF which tracks the price of gold by actually holding gold.
My second mistake was in buying options that are so close to expiration. They were priced considerably over the underlying value. That means that I paid a high premium for the options. The closer to expiration that they come the lower the premium becomes. That's why even though gold went up over $10 an ounce today, my option stayed at the same price. I had about 15 minutes when I could have sold at a decent price. The rest of the day it just slowly went down.
Well I'll have to leave, now. I've got to check Ebay and see if I bought a laptop. I might do that at home. I'm busy talking with Nate and Brian so my attention is getting divided.

Watching gold

I've been watching the price of gold, today. It started off in the negative. I was down about $300 on my options. It came back at is now in the positive. I'm up about $200 from where I was yesterday. I'm really ashamed of myself for trading options. I should have known better. It seems that only 1 out of 3 or 4 trades on options work. The big thing is that the time value works against you so much. It's tempting to only write options. The trouble with that is that when you write an option there is no limit to how badly it can go against you.
I'm also bidding on a couple of Gateway 9550s. I don't think I'll get either one. The bidding goes on till tomorrow. Most of the time, the bidding doesn't heat up until the last 10 minutes. I do hope that I'll get one of them, however.
I'm at Java Johns. The wifi is working fine, here. I'm using my good machine with a "B" model wifi card. Sometimes I have troubles with the "B"s because they don't like to pick up weak signals. Today, I'm having no troubles. The co-op is the place with the weakest signals. Sometimes, my "B"s don't see any signal, there, at all.
I talked with Brian, today. He was having troubles with the Internet at Bookends and Beans. I saw that he had a "B" model wifi card. They don't work with a WPA password scheme. I told him that he would have to buy a "G" or "N" model wifi card. He told me that he was thinking about getting a new computer. That would make sense, too.
That, kind of, brings me to my disability topic of computing on a budget. If you are on disability, or you are waiting for it to start, you are probably having troubles with your Internet habit. Don't despair. It is possible to continue your computing on a limited budget.
It might even make sense to have Internet at your home. You can probably get Internet for around $30/month. The cable tv system will probably have introductory offers at that range that will last up to a year. The cable modem is the fastest that I've seen, I'm really happy with it. It enables me to track my investment, minute to minute, at home. I was always stuck at a Cafe while I was downloading updates on old laptops. For me, it makes sense to have Internet at home.
For you, however, it might not make sense. It's a monthly commitment that may be out of your price range. Another consideration is that you might be in the Internet Cafes already. If you spend a lot of time at restaurants, anyway, it might make sense to get a cheap laptop and feed your Internet addiction, there. The trouble is that you'll end up spending more on coffee and treats than you would spend on the Internet at home. The restaurant Internet option didn't work for me because I like to trade stocks, bonds, and options. I also like to fix up old laptops and I would find myself spending hours downloading things for them all of the time.
If you decide to get an old laptop, you can get one online. I like Ebay, but I used to buy a lot of things on Ubid. I don't know about Ubid any more, but if you buy on Ebay, figure on using Paypal. It's about the only way that people take payments, any more. You'll have to have a credit card to set up Paypal, but it is convenient.
Other places to look for old laptops include: GoodWill, second-hand stores, auctions at the local schools. I've even seen some listed on bulletin boards. Keep your eyes open and something will show up. You can always get a wifi card on Ebay for between $10 and $15. Look for a "G" or better, since there is the password problem and the "B"s don't have the signal strength that the newer ones have.
Hang in there, and happy computing.

Loading Linux on Jim's machine

I'm at Cafe Magpie, today. I just finished loading Mint Linux on Jim's machine. He now has no excuse for not going to my blog. I bookmarked this blog.
I think he went to Linux because his wife, Sherry, blocked some of the web sites that he likes. I doubt that she'll be able to block anything on Linux. Maybe I could make some money by doing it for her and charging her.
Anyway, they gave me a bunch of tomatoes for my effort. It took a while and I got a bit tired of Windows Vista in the process. I had trouble getting their machine to boot to the CD player. It turned out that they have something which selects what drive you boot to on their machine. When it's starting up you press f12 to get a menu of drives to boot to. It turned out that their new machine is slower than the one that they gave me. It was 2.2 Gighertz. The one that I've got is 3.3 Gighertz.
I also got a new, old laptop to work on, today. It's dead as a doornail. A red light comes on that shows that the battery is dead, but it won't do anything else. I tried reseating the processor. It wasn't too hard to disassemble, but it's still dead. I'll have to get another, bad, 9550 to swap parts with it.
It has a lot of good parts. It had a hard drive caddy, a memory chip, and a dvd drive. I forgot, it had a good ac adapter.
I noticed that it didn't have any heat sink compound on the processor. That might have killed the processor in the first place. I couldn't find any around the house, but I know that I've got some, somewhere. When I get off here, I'll go to Ebay and see about buying another 9550.
About getting by on disability: You really have to keep your expenses down when you are on disability. Never eat out. It's just too expensive. Even if you find a place that gives good value for the money, you'll have to leave a tip. The only exceptions are the places like McDonalds and Wendy's where you can get a burger for a dollar. You can hardly make one at home for less, and you don't have to leave a tip.
I used to eat at Subway's, occasionally. The $5 footlong is a bargain. The trouble is that I would eat the whole thing when I was thinking about taking half of it home. Then I would both, overeat and over spend. I simply quit going to Subway's. If they get a real bargain for their 6 inch sandwiches, I'll reconsider.
Gold went down today, so I'm losing money on my Newmont options. Maybe it'll bounce back, tomorrow.
Later

Garage Sale

I got up early, this morning, to help out at the Democrat garage sale. I set my alarm for 6:00 to get there by 7:00. I was thinking that I would have to set everything up, but Phyliss and Donna already had it done by the time I got there. I just took in money and moved things around a bit. We did well. We shut down at 3:00 PM. We took in over $240, so it was worth doing. I bought a few CDs and a bag for a laptop. I sold one of the desktops that I loaded Linux on. It was a good sale.
Today was also my birthday. Alice remembered and gave me a Cappuccino and a monkey doll. I'm now 62. I don't know how that affects my Social Security. I think I still have to be afraid that they will decide that I'm not disabled. I forgot about looking for a job. It might be a bad idea.
On the down side: I registered for a service called site meter. It counts the number of readers that this site gets. So far, nobody has come to my site. I'm getting a bit discouraged. I need to get more friends to come here. I'm surprised that Alice doesn't seem to be showing up on site meter. Maybe it isn't as accurate as they make out. I'll have to give it a week or so.
Another factor is that my site may not be as interesting as others. I don't have much going on so it's more of a diary than anything else. I try to have something for disabled people, but maybe they don't have computers. Since I'm on a limited income I haven't done much to the basic site. I might spiff it up a bit. One thing I could do is to take more pictures. My $20 camera does just fine. It's a bit of a hassle, in that I have to download pictures on my Windows machine, first.
I hate Windows, but I have to use it with the camera. Once it's in the Windows machine I can transfer it to any of the Linux machines with a memory stick.
Well, Java Johns is about to close so I better finish up.
Later