Tuesday, December 30, 2003

Slobodan Gingrich

Is it me or do former Serbia President and war crimes suspect Slobodan Milosevic and former house speaker Newt Gringrich appear to be twins separated at birth?

Monday, December 29, 2003

Goodbye 2003, We Hardly Knew Ye

Christmas has come and gone. I got the Firefly DVD series from Mrs. Lock, a few sweaters, a couple of gift cards to Best Buy. I saw the inlaws and my uncle's family as well. All in all a good holiday.

It's also been a good year, 2003. I got married. My finances are in very good shape. 40k in 401k. 28k in ESOP and 3300 in IRA. I'm coming up on 6 years at my job which is by far a record. I have all the toys that I could want, big screen, progressive scan dvd, Tivo DVR, surround sound, ton of video games. I don't need anything else. 2004 might be boring, but we'll see. I'm still childless. The year could be very big.

Today: DJI 10366, SP5 1100 NASDAQ 1989
Jan 03: DJI 8903, SP5 881, NASDAQ 1346

Thursday, December 25, 2003

Merry Christmas...I Think?

I got up at 8 this morning. Went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, used mouthwash, pet the cat that was asleep in the bathtub. I went back into the bedroom, saw Mrs. Lock was awake and I said something about the rabbit making noise in the next room.

She said "Merry Christmas." Oh yeah, it is Christmas! 20 years ago that would have been the first thing on my mind and the first words screaming out of my mouth running to my parents in their bedroom five in the morning to inform them of the date and ritual we normally celebrate.

So I forgot it was Christmas. I am getting old.

Monday, December 22, 2003

Goodbye Ma Bell

I've joined a growing revolution for saving money - dumping your phone line. With the cell phone plans getting cheaper, land lines are having a tough time competing with a technology you can take out of the house and have it still work. So we dumped our line and I'm sure we won't be the last. It's 100+ year old technology that might be seeing the end of days.

It's a good idea that some of the phone companies are getting into the cell business to keep their company alive. Some also have their hand in broadband internet which might be the only reason to keep the old phone lines around.

It's ironic that the internet growth helped the phone companies when dial up customers needed a second line to access their ISP. Now with broadband and cell phones, people are dropping all of their land lines.

DJI 10296, SP5 1089 NASDAQ 1953

Monday, December 15, 2003

Jon Stewart: ABC's Person of the Week

Jon Stewart was ABC's Person of the Week last week. Here are a couple of quotes from the humble genius.

(Regarding the liberation of Baghdad) "If you are incapable of feeling at least a tiny amount of joy watching ordinary Iraqi's celebrate, you are hopelessly lost to the left. If you are incapapble of feeling badly that we had to use this much force to accomplish this, you are ideologically lost to the right."
-- Jon Stewart

"People's sense of humor goes as far as their ideology."
-- Jon Stewart
Historical Weekend

An historical event took place over the weekend. It was the capture of Saddam Hussein, found hiding in a 'spider hole' south of his hometown of Tikrit. He was captured alive and pretty much well.

The international response is interesting. In Iraq, the majority seem to celebrate his capture. Arab leaders outside of Iraq are saying they are disappointed that a supposed Muslim leader would surrender so quickly. I think these Arab leaders were looking for an excuse all year to bad mouth Saddam, they knew the truth about his ways, but popular sentiment was Muslim to support Muslim so I don't think they could speak out against him until now.

Now that Hussein is incarcerated, is there a chance he'll be Saddamized?

DJI 10042, SP5 1074 NASDAQ 1949

Friday, December 12, 2003

Sure ignorance is bliss but it's also incredibly boring.
-- me

Happy seven years L.


Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Boxing Boxing Helena

Absolutely the worst movie of all time: Boxing Helena. I've always had it in for this movie ever since I saw it. I do not hate many movies. In fact, the ones I don't like I'm just simply indifferent to. Boxing Helena however is one title that I seethe about. What a horrible piece of crap.

The main female character gets into an accident and takes up residence with her surgeon who is trying to keep her alive. During her stay, the surgeon wants to turn his patient into a living Venus de Milo statue by cutting off her limbs one at a time over a period of time. He tells her after each chop that he's doing this to save her life. Eventually she runs out of limbs, and THEN decides she needs to escape the doctor's maniacal possession. Because 4 missing limbs is too much. 2, eh, he might be right. 3, really disappointing and unlikely but still possible he might be right, but 4, whoa buddy you've gone too far. So Miss Torso literally rolls out into traffic as part of her master escape plan, gets hit and dies.

Now if that insane plot wasn't enough to ruin this movie, something then happens that is the one thing that ruins a story every time, every tv show, every horror tale - the doctor wakes up and sees his patient lying in one piece in her hospital bed. None of it happened because 95% of the movie was a dream - and I use the term dream loosely. Talk about a major reminder about a waste of time.

If you're pissed I didn't say spoilers first before blowing the plot, believe me I'm not the one that did the spoiling. If I save one person, one child, one orphan from seeing this festering pile, I think I've made a difference in this world.

This is the flick Kim Bassinger lost a lawsuit over by backing out and not starring in after signing a contract saying she would. I can not blame her for backing out and I think the 14 million she paid (or whatever it was) in damages to the filmmakers was a small price to pay to disassociate yourself from this steaming turd piece. Let me tell you something. Having Kimmy back out of your picture is not what caused the "serious damages" to your movie.

Hopefully I'll wake up and realize the movie was all a dream and doesn't really exist.

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

A person who dares questions their government is the ultimate patriot.
-- me

DJI 9965, SP5 1069 NASDAQ 1948

Friday, December 05, 2003

"I have trouble sleeping. Someone told me to listen to white noise so I bought a Pat Buchanan tape. It's working out pretty good."
-- Craig Shoemaker

Monday, December 01, 2003

Turkey Day 2003

Thanksgiving has come and gone. Thursday we had the wife's family over for the usual holiday get together. It's close to 20 some people. It makes the place crowded but they're a lot of fun when we all get together. My wife has five aunts, an uncle plus her mom all attending with everyone in their immediate family.

I also had my parents up for the weekend staying with us. We had so many people in the house though that my parents went to my brother's for Thanksgiving. It gave us some breathing room with my in laws.

The family organizes a secret santa gift exchange during the Thanksgiving get together. This is my first year in it since we were married earlier this year and I became an official member of the family. I tried to opt out of it saying I was single all these years to avoid the sweat shop gift exchange program but the coven of aunts wouldn't have it.

Mrs. Lock and I agreed to only spend $50 on each other for Christmas. I tried to make it $0 so we could use the money for other people's gifts but she wants to exchange something on our first Christmas as a married couple. I can still do that with a zero dollar price tag.

Friday's stock market didn't move much. I'm sure there weren't many traders on the floor the day after Thanksgiving but that's ok. One of my mutual funds which is called Emerging Markets, representing other country's markets had a huge day. Apparently it was business as usual in Brazil, Japan and South Korea the day after Thanksgiving.

DJI 9849, SP5 1064 NASDAQ 1978