In Search of the Perfect Investment

What did we do to deserve yesterday?

Replied my friend Steve:

Beats the heck out of me.  Yesterday was a great day.

 My favorite stocks did really well — AMZN, FB, GOOGL and VZ.

The market likes technology stocks at present.

Also to look at:  FEYE, NVDA and MBLY,

Don’t post your personal stuff anywhere on the Internet.

I hear Facebook posts are prime divorce lawyer fodder.

Your quirky lifestyle posted for all to admire is not good for your next job application.

Good working assumption: Everything you post is permanent. Someone already has it — even if you try and erase it.

September is tax increase month.

If you don’t pay your local taxes immediately — if not sooner — you’ll get whacked with a whopping 10% “penalty” increase.

Here’s how it “works.”

1. You get your local real estate tax bills in September.

2. If you don’t pay them now, the next reminder you’ll get will be January. That “reminder” will come with a huge 10% penalty.

Why don’t they send you monthly reminders — like everyone else?

Simple. It’s a sneaky way to jack your local tax bills.

This ridiculous looking thing works perfectly. It’s a Wi-Fi extender. Some part of your house has lousy, slow, dead Wi-Fi. Stick this thing between your router and the dead spot. Suddenly your Wi-Fi dead spot wakes up and becomes full speed.

Two things are great about the gadget: First, it works. Second, it’s easy to program — a first among Wi-Fi extenders. Just follow the bouncing ball.

It has four blue/red lights: The big blue one tells you it has signal. One little one tells you it has power. And two tell you the thing is working on 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz — the two frequencies Wi-Fi works on.

$94 at Amazon (where else?). Worth every penny. Click here.

Internet speed matters. I measured my home Verizon FiOS this morning. This is what I got:

Yesterday I was at one of WeWork’s Manhattan, New York, offices. This is what I got:

That’s the fastest I’ve ever had in a conference room. It was wonderful.

Speed is exhilarating. You get your work done faster and more accurately.

Yes, even the cloud works better at high speed.

Newer laptops are:

1. Thinner

2. Lighter

3. Last longer on battery

4. Have more pixels.

That’s all good. Bad is:

1. The keyboards are worse. The keys have less “travel.” You type more slowly. You make more mistakes.

2. Typefaces on the new screens become very small. You have to keep hitting Ctrl + to make the type bigger.

3. Newer laptops are no faster. Intel has hit a wall. Moore’s Law has run out. Some new Apple laptops are slower than my four-year old ThinkPad X230. No kidding.

 Instagram is now even better. Instagram is my favorite fun app.

Good news: you can now pinch, crop and enlarge the images. Favorite feeds to follow:

+ DavidKrasPhotography

+ Destination_wild

+ WildLifePlanet

+ YourTravelSpots

+ Wild.Show

+ Cub.animals

+ BeautifulDestinationsDaily

+ Victoriasconfession.s

+ Fantastic_lux

+ Nature.Geography

+ DavidDoubilet

+ Awesomeglobe

+ VictoriasSecretDaily

and

Here’s how to get healthy:

This slide comes from Hooper Holmes (HH), a company which teaches wellness to other companies:

HH tells me one dollar spent on helping your employees live healthier lives saves $3 in insurance premiums.

Three favorite latest New Yorker cartoons

Wonderful puns.

…When fish are in schools, they sometimes take debate.

… A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.

… A dentist and a manicurist married. They fought tooth and nail.

… A will is a dead giveaway.

… A boiled egg is hard to beat.

… When you’ve seen one shopping center you’ve seen a mall.

… Did you hear about the fellow whose entire left side was cut off? He’s all right now.

… The guy who fell into an upholstery machine is now fully recovered.

… He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

Harry Newton who is not posting a new blog every day. Too hard. If you want to always get the latest posting, sign up for the newsletter at the top of the left column. No charge. Be good if more of you sent tips.