Dow Jones Industrial Average

The DJIA hit 10,000 in about 1998. I was 17 then, having lots of great sex with Buena, and was about to become an adult. In short, The Dow Jones has been at 10,000 ever since I’ve been an adult. Having it below 10,000 makes me feel young, immature, callow–and not in a good way!

It is kind of crazy that, in the age of Twitter, major centralized news sources like TechCrunch are starting to replace search engines themselves as the arbiter of popularity.  If TechCrunch doesn’t like you, or ignores you, then your business is sunk.

Personally, regardless of what TechCrunch may say, I’m sticking with my favorite Mac Twitter client, Twit Menulet.

All of them are crazy, for either of two different reasons.

Half of my clients seem only to serve outsiders.  They have no specific sense of their own mission or allegiance to any particular cause.  Yes, of course, they have a mission statement and a name that gives them an obstensible raison d’etre–but the people running the organization actually seem to owe no allegiance to that reason.  Instead, they are remarkably sensitive to the vagaries of Twitter comments, blog posts, news articles–and to my own advice.

The other half of my clients seem oblivious to outsiders.  They are so firmly committed to their own mission that there is no conceivable value to be gained from hiring, for example, somebody like me.  My advice is routinely ignored anyway.  These folks will listen to outside criticism or advice only if it fits with their own pre-conceived notions.

This is the reason that I like to bring clients to the table at founding, so that I can advise them on their mission statement.  My advice is the following: incorporate your philosophy of interaction with the outside world into your mission statement.  To what degree to you plan to conduct your business according to your personal bailiwick, and to what degree do you serve a specific constituency?

Problem is, I just bought a house recently, and I borrowed about 20% of the cost on margin. Therefore, I’m treated to calls from my broker about every two weeks asking for more money. This will most likely work out fine as long as I can keep my job. The problem is, I can’t seem to concentrate on work when my wealth is evaporating on a minute-by-minute basis. Instead, I spend about 30% of every day reading MarketWatch. And that figure isn’t an exaggeration.

I’ve been looking for a stock ticker application for a while now, in hopes that I could watch the ticker while doing other work. I spent a lot of time on various leads (wStock, etc.) only to come up dry. Yesterday, though, I finally came across Stock Menulet. This is a simple little app that does exactly what I want: shows me stock prices in my Mac’s menu bar. Here’s a screen shot:

It is highly recommended.

Ed was my wife’s boyfriend in college. We’ve been out of college for nearly twenty years and I frankly still hate that dude. I don’t like to see his name, short as it is, in print.

I sometimes feel as though my whole life is defined by the structure of my wife’s former relationships. We live next door to her high-school boyfriend, Jerry. They both deny it, but I don’t believe either one of them. Jerry is married to her college roomate, Buena. And now the address of her new blog is based on a nickname given to her, AS I NOW KNOW, by her college boyfriend.

Well. I think I am going to learn a lot about my wife from her blog.

The leader of this team of doctors was a dignified , solicitous gentleman who held one finger up directly in front of Yossarian and demanded, “How many fingers do you see?”
“Two,” said Yossarian.
“How many fingers do you see now?” asked the doctor, holding up two.
“Two,” said Yossarian.
“And how many now?” asked the doctor, holding up none.
“Two,” said Yossarian.
The doctor’s face wreathed with a smile. “By jove, he’s right,” he declared jubilantly. “He does see everything twice.”

I love this interpretation of the phrase “see everything twice.”

In this blog, though, I’m going to think of the phrase a bit differently. Here we are going to see everything twice as follows: one on the surface, and once at a deeper level. We are going to take two looks at every issue, to make sure we aren’t missing anything.

My first (real) post will be about the famous credit crisis, and why such situations are inevitable in a free economy. In this item, I’m going to focus on the problems of my friend Jerry in finding a home. We have discussed his situation in excruciating detail over the course o the past several months, so I hope he won’t mind. And…I have to thank Jerry for his encouragement and detailed instructions in how to establish this blog. I am a technology user, but Jerry is a technology creator, and this stuff his second nature to him. Thanks, man.