touched by a gorilla

I just felt like posting this video to my blog.touched by a Gorilla

Ubuntu 11.10

I just wanted to tell the world how disgusted I am about the latest version of Ubuntu. They got away from the Gnome user interface and they have something, I think is named Unity. I find it to be harder to use than Gnome. Instead of having, easy to use, menus, I have to think of what I'm looking for and type it in. It's kind of like going back to DOS. I think they tried to mess with Mint Linux which copies Ubuntu every revision and improves on it. This time Ubuntu deliberately messed up their operating system to mess with Mint. That's my opinion.

I added a picture of Dug Road that I took last Sunday. I've had a lot of pictures of Dug Road in my blogs. It's rather scenic. During the first part of the Twentieth Century it was, in fact, a road. It was repeatedly flooded so they quit driving on it. At some point it was converted into a bike path and walking trail. However, it still retains the name of Dug Road. Later this winter, I may get some cross-country skies and ski here. They don't clear it for all the skiers.
The stock market is still going crazy. Yesterday it went up 337 points and today its down about 100 points. There  is no way to trade this. I'm glad that I'm out.
I'm thinking about getting into buying things at auctions here and selling them on E-bay. I've done well with coins, stamps, and guns. I'll need to study about jewelry. I'll have to read a book or two about old jewelry and try to buy that, cheap.
Loula didn't show up this morning. She left a message on my phone, which I left at home. I guess I really should carry my cell phone with me all the time. Maybe, I'm afraid that I'll lose it.
Not much going on here. I'll post again in a few days.
later

The geese at Upper Iowa

I took a few pictures of the geese at the Upper Iowa River, just off of Dug Road. This is one.
I've been getting lazy. I intended to walk the length of Dug Road, which is about 1 1/2  miles long, but I ended up just walking a hundred yards or so.
Luther is closed for the Christmas holidays so I can't go swimming. I only went one time and it made me so tired that I could hardly get out of the pool, afterwards.
I talked with Loula last Friday night at the Co-op about my money making schemes. Specifically I told her about my idea of going West and looking for gold. I also mentioned the idea of buying things at auctions and selling them on E-bay. If I discount the silver-plated flatware debacle, I did rather well at that. There is no market for silver plate, no matter how pretty it is, but I did well with coins, stamps and guns. I'll have to keep track of all of my expenses, such as eating and gasoline, but it might be worth trying. I'll have to sell on E-bay, myself, since I wouldn't be able to afford paying 25% to the Game Exchange. I think the gold prospecting will have to wait until I get a better vehicle. It's worth a try.

Last week, when my sister Faye and I went to the Christmas at Luther choral presentation, later we ate at Rubaiyat's. Here is a picture of Faye, me, and Jim and Sherry Slitor. Faye wanted me to send her this picture. I wonder if she can download it from the blog.
I transferred my representative payee account to a local bank. I hope that it works out alright. I am a bit concerned about getting my allowance checks in a timely fashion. I'm hoping to use any surplus for investing either in buying at auctions or on E-trade. We'll see.
Later

Hanging out at Java John's

I'm just hanging out at Java John's, today. I'll post a picture of the place. I may have mentioned it on my blog, earlier. The owner, Mary, is a great cook and she has very reasonable prices.

My sister visited me, last week. We went to "Christmas at Luther". It's a musical presentation at Luther
College. They put it on each year. Only Luther alumni, students, and faculty and staff can get tickets. I got four tickets, 2 for my sister and me, and 2 for Jim and Sherry Slitor. We had a great time. The show was awesome. We sat in the front row and afterwords, we went to Rubaiyat's for dinner.
Faye, my sister, went back to California last Friday. I failed her inspection of my apartment. I now have to clean and organized the place in case a woman actually sees the place again.
I've been talking with Loula once a week in a professional way. She's a counselor at the Behavioral Health Office. She got me to go for walks in the morning and make the commitment to go swimming at Luther in the morning. So far I haven't gone swimming at all, yet. It's getting a bit cold to walk in the morning, as well. I need to Just Do It. I've been trying to lose weight by reducing my food intake, but that hasn't done the job. I also need to increase my activity level. I'm afraid that the medications that I'm taking for schizophrenia is making me gain weight. Apparently it has that effect on a lot of people. I've probably reduced my food intake by 2/3s. I've been eating very little and I still can't seem to lose weight. I take vitamins but I'm afraid that I may not be getting the nutrition that I should.
I haven't been investing at all, lately. Between the car and my investments, I'm broke. I'm down to $300, that I'm going to try to buy a car with at an auction, this Saturday. It's another Voyager, but it's six years newer than mine. It has close to 200,000 miles on it so there is hope that it will go cheap. So much for storage locker auctions and investing.
I've got a metal detector but it's too late in the year to look for coins around here. The ground is frozen. I was thinking that I might find a way to go west and look for gold nuggets. Maybe I can work that out, somehow. I could sleep in the back of my van. Where there is a will there is a way. I'm back to reading books on the Law of Attraction. I never did get into tithing. I think that only works well for the churches.
Maybe I should try it, after all, things went to shit when I didn't tithe. Things were working quite well before I read that book. Maybe it jinxed me.
Maybe I'll get back, tomorrow

I'm back

I haven't been posting anything for several months. I don't know what got me started again, but I'm back.
This has been more of a journal than anything else and I think I'll keep it that way.
I moved from Calmar and I now live in Decorah. It's a lot larger than Calmar and it has coffee shops and grocery stores that I like to hang out at. I was spending over $300/month just driving back and forth between Calmar and Decorah.
I lost most of my money, trading stock options. The market has been terrible for investing. The last posting I was starting to invest in options. They are a lot more risky than stocks but when you are right you can make a lot more money with them. I had a month or so when I was seeing my options go through the roof and my stocks poke along. I switched to trading just options. I had a couple of weeks that I made over 50% a week in the options. Then it turned sour. I didn't have enough sense to bail out as I felt that it would turn around. Of course, my car had troubles at that time and I had to spend money to get it repaired. I should have just bailed out and forgotten about trading. The trading saying "Sell in May, and go away" worked, this year. I wish that I had done that.
I'll be back tomorrow.
Later

The camera works

It turned out that I was operating the camera wrong. I was snapping pictures before the lens had extended. It just wasn't ready to take pictures before I started taking them. I've got to be patient.
 This is a picture of my van. It's a 1990 Plymouth Voyager. It has the grill off of a Dodge so I suppose it's bi-racial.
I'll post the  eagles' nest link   . That should do it. I've got it on a couple of earlier blogs. Just click on the blue letters.
Well, I've been making money on gold, lately. It's been going up since the Egyptian crisis started. I missed out on the first big move, but it's been moving up steadily since then. So far I've got about an eighty percent gain on my GLD options. I'm thinking about selling my commodity ETF and buying options on Gold Corp, tomorrow. I would like to buy a dip but I don't think there will be one. Now is the time to buy.
I've been struggling with my new desktop computer. It's not really new since I bought it, used, from  Luther College. But it's new to me.
I bought some memory DIMMs from E-bay, last week and they didn't work. After taking them to Luther and NICC it turns out that cheap DIMMs may or may not work with different computers. I gave them to NICC. I'll see about getting new ones from Wal-Mart. Nate can help me.
I've been reading a lot about the Law of Attraction, lately. Basically it means that I can visualize money coming to me. So far it seems to be working. When I had to come up with money for the taxes a lady from the credit organization that handles my monthly bills called me. She said that quite a bit of money had stacked up for me, there. I'm using that for the  taxes. I'll also see about tithing with the monthly surplus. Another book raved about the way that tithing magnetizes money to you. I'll give it a shot for 6 months. If it works, I'll make it a long term thing.
Later

One Picture Worked

I took several pictures today with my new camera and only one worked. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Maybe the batteries are low. I know that if you leave batteries in some cameras, that the camera will drain them even though its not on. Well this is a picture of the Dug Road trail in the wintertime. If you go back on some of my old blogs you can find it in the summertime.
I took the tax stuff to H&R Block yesterday. I had some good news and some bad. First, I made a lot of money with my stock investments, last year. The bad news is that I owe a lot of taxes. That's just the price of success. As much as it pains me, I'll just transfer some money from E-Trade and pay them. My gold options are doing too well to touch, so I'll use money from the commodities ETF.
I've been reading books on the Law of Attraction, lately. I found that in one I set a goal of making $1000/month beyond what I make on Social Security. That was achieved. This year I want to make $200,000 for financial security. If my bonds become worth something, that will be doable. I don't want to limit how I will do it, but I would feel a lot better if I had that amount of money in my portfolio. Maybe I'll win the lottery.
That reminds me. Monday I'm calling the guy with the storage locker for auction. He was going to let the previous owner try to make payment, yesterday. If it's still being auctioned I think I'll bid $500. He said that it had a washer and dryer, a stove, a microwave, and a rolling toolbox. I don't really need any of those things but  if I can sell them I would have an new revenue stream. It's worth looking into.
Later