WWAV is moving up, buoyed by upgrades. ADSK looks like it’s coming back. But it’s one of those stocks that never seems to fulfill my expectations. Ditto for UNH.
Big dividends recently from NLY, AGNC and STWD. Those guys are hanging in nicely. Sometimes big dividend yields don’t mean lousy companies.
Dealing with too much spam (see below) and finishing my dictionary.
Robin Williams is dead, a young 63. My favorite comedian. He enriched so many of our lives. Here’s one of his best routines. Robin Williams on golf.
To watch the hilarious golf video, click here.
A Dispatch in Foreign Policy headlined:
In Gaza, the War Is Far From Over.
As strikes resume, the battered Palestinians of the Strip don’t want Hamas to give up the fight.
In Cairo, Jerusalem, and even Ramallah, the idea that this war could fatally weaken Hamas appears to be taken seriously. Inside of Gaza, Sourani and others interviewed predicted that it would only make the Palestinian Islamist movement stronger.
“They are strong now, because people really appreciate them,” Sourani said. “I think for the last four or five years, Hamas is the uncontested political power in the occupied territories…. In Gaza, they are monopolizing the political scene.”
The fighters, too, believe they have the wind at their back.
Read the Dispatch here.
Neat super moon photos. The moon is close to Earth now, and looks great.
The super moon over San Diego’s Immaculata, taken early yesterday morning. More super moon photos here.
I used to write marketing copy to sell our magazines or our trade shows. But these days, the spammers write so much better:
I had bitched to my ISP that suddenly I was being inundated with three hundred spam emails a today. Here’s their helpful reply:
Lately, spammers have been sending ever more intense spam waves to lists
of legitimate users harvested from various Internet sources. In
addition, they have been abusing otherwise legitimate various mail
services that they have compromised somehow. This makes it difficult for
anti-spam organizations to block their emails on the SMTP level.
First, we do suggest you enable our server-side anti-spam filtering:
Next, you can indeed apply some local spam filtering. The adaptive junk filter controls of the email program
Thunderbird (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/) is commonly
trusted by many Internet users. You will have to spend some time to
train them first.
As a last resort, if you can afford to, you can indeed change your email
address and notify your contacts. Spammers will then get bounces. We
cannot comment on how long it will take for them to remove your email
address from their lists.
Be sure to not publish your email address online, and do not submit it
to sites you do not trust.
In short, you need at least five email addresses:
1. For your family and close friends.
2. For your trusted business associates, partners and investments.
3. For newsletters — like those from the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, Seeking Alpha, Barchart.com, Google Alerts.
4. Airline, car rental reservations.
5. Online shopping.
I’m thinking these could be HarryFamily@, HarryBusiness@, etc. This way I’d recognize where the spam is coming from and be able to cut it off. This is all very boring and a huge time waster. But it’s increasingly necessary.
Summer is vacation time — Part 1.Some tips on making the best of your vacation, from Daniel J. Levitin, author of the book, “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload. His article is called, Hit the reset button in your brain,
Taking breaks is biologically restorative. Naps are even better. In several studies, a nap of even 10 minutes improved cognitive function and vigor, and decreased sleepiness and fatigue. If we can train ourselves to take regular vacations — true vacations without work — and to set aside time for naps and contemplation, we will be in a more powerful position to start solving some of the world’s big problems. And to be happier and well rested while we’re doing it.
You can read his entire piece here.
Summer is vacation time — Part 2. Actual complaints received by Thomas Cook, allegedly:
+ “On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don’t like spicy food.”
+ “The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room.”
+ “We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow.”
+ “They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax.”
+ “No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared.”
+ “We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish.”
+ “It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home to America. This seems unfair.”
+ “I compared the size of our one-bedroom suite to our friends’ three-bedroom and ours was significantly smaller.”
+ “I was bitten by a mosquito. Your brochure did not mention mosquitoes.”
+ “My fiancee and I requested twin-beds when we booked, but instead we were placed in a room with a king bed. We now hold you responsible and want to be re-reimbursed for the fact that I became pregnant. This would not have happened had you put us in the room that we booked.”
I guess the nice lady hadn’t learned to say the hardest word in the English language — NO.
Harry Newton, who visited his bank yesterday to make a nice deposit. In the old days I would have received a free:
These days I received a free:
No wonder bank profits are peaking. And customer service sucks. (Bad pun.)
Always fun to carry a camera around. Here are friends awaiting the Roosevelt Island Tram, which goes from the Island to Manhattan.
An inadvertent, but funny sign:
Harry,
I was at an FBI briefing a year or so ago on the subject of Cyber Crime at the corporate level. They STRONGLY recommended that if you use on-line banking, that you get an inexpensive laptop and use it only for that purpose and absolutely nothing else. They said that 99% of the FBI personnel practice this.
Can you explain the logic?
Sure,
Not all virus, Trojans, malware and key loggers are detected; especially something new. If you only use a computer for on-line banking, then getting infected could only come from the bank web sites which are highly monitored for hacker intrusions. Almost all infections come from websites that are malicious or that have been hacked and nasty stuff inserted into the code making you the unsuspected victim.
By the way, no email on that machine either. No other programs, Fresh install, make sure updates are current and only use the browser. Only banking websites should be visited.
Scoot