{"id":24632,"date":"2014-02-14T09:23:54","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T14:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=24632"},"modified":"2014-02-17T07:37:51","modified_gmt":"2014-02-17T12:37:51","slug":"happy-valentines-day-have-i-got-suggested-presents-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=24632","title":{"rendered":"Happy Valentine’s Day. Have I got suggested presents for you!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday, February 17. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Markets are closed. I’ll be back tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Friday, February <\/strong>14. Valentine’s Day.<\/p>\n

NLY, SGOL and WFM are bouncing back. Good strategy. When they get hit, nibble.<\/p>\n

Should I do this short? Or better buy a put option? <\/strong><\/span>I am SO tempted to short TWC (Time Warner Cable).<\/p>\n

If Comcast and TWC think they can get their merger approved by Washington they’re smoking something. (And I want some, too.)<\/p>\n

Why would the government allow it — to join two biggies together to make the biggest, the hugest, a monster?<\/p>\n

Why would any customer want it? Comcast service is horrible, even worse than Time Warner’s.<\/p>\n

I listened to the executives yesterday on CNBC struggle to justify their merger. Reminded me of the interviews between the AOL and Time Warner executives when they announced that dumb merger. Oh yes, they’re going to get $1.5 billion of immediate savings — by closing call centers and firing people. Employees will love that. And customers will wait even longer for “service.”<\/p>\n

+ \u201cThe combination of Time Warner Cable and Comcast creates an exciting opportunity for our company, for our customers, and for our shareholders,\u201d said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts.<\/p>\n

+ \u201cThis combination creates a company that delivers maximum value for our shareholders, enormous opportunities for our employees<\/strong> and a superior experience for our customers,\u201d said Time Warner Cable CEO Robert Marcus.<\/p>\n

Business Insider<\/strong><\/a> figures they’ll fire 5,000 employees.<\/div>\n

I wonder where Apple figures in all this. It was negotiating with Time Warner to supply it cable boxes.<\/p>\n

Meantime, neither Comcast nor Time Warner cable has been able to deliver the Internet speeds which Verizon FiOS delivers.:<\/p>\n

\"TimeWARNERInternetspeed\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I had a friend test his Time Warner service this morning. It was 15.24 Mbps down and a disgustingly miserable 1.08 Mbps up.<\/p>\n

I had another friend test his Time Warner connection. It was slightly better but still miserable compared with FiOS:<\/p>\n

\"TimeWarnerSpeedDesert\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Amazon is after world retail domination. <\/strong>It sacrifices earnings for growth. Hence its share price bears no relation to financials, but to “buzz.” Lately it’s lost a little and friends are talking about picking some up at these depressed levels. (I picked up some Whole Foods yesterday — as I suggested in the coulm yesterday– and it’s bounced back a little already.)
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"AmazonDrop\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Which brings me to a fascinating long New Yorker piece this week on the company. Excerpts:<\/p>\n

+ Sargent said that Bezos\u2019s ambition was apparent to him from the beginning\u2014\u201cMy God, he drives hard.\u201d But he couldn\u2019t see Bezos\u2019s master plan \u201cfor shit.\u201d \u201cHe was already going to be the Everything Store,\u201d Sargent said when we met in his trapezoidal office, in the narrow wedge of the Flatiron Building. \u201cI thought he was just a bookstore, stupid me. Books were going to be the way to get the names and the data. Books were his customer-acquisition strategy.\u201d As long as Amazon kept growing like mad, investors would pour in money and Wall Street wouldn\u2019t pay much attention to profits. (The company didn\u2019t have a profitable quarter until 2001, and still struggles to stay in the black.)<\/p>\n

+ Amazon executives considered publishing people \u201cantediluvian losers with rotary phones and inventory systems designed in 1968 and warehouses full of crap.\u201d Publishers kept no data on customers, making their bets on books a matter of instinct rather than metrics. They were full of inefficiences, starting with overpriced Manhattan offices. There was \u201ca general feeling that the New York publishing business was just this cloistered, Gilded Age antique just barely getting by in a sort of Colonial Williamsburg of commerce, but when Amazon waded into this they would show publishing how it was done.\u201d<\/p>\n

+ The combination of ceaseless innovation and low-wage drudgery makes Amazon the epitome of a successful New Economy company. It\u2019s hiring as fast as it can\u2014nearly thirty thousand employees last year. But its brand of creative destruction might be killing more jobs than it makes. According to a recent study of U.S. Census data by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, in Washington, brick-and-mortar retailers employ forty-seven people for every ten million dollars in revenue earned; Amazon employs fourteen.<\/p>\n

Please read the entire New Yorker article on Amazon. It’s fascinating. Click here.<\/strong><\/a> I don’t presently own any shares in Amazon.<\/p>\n

The Second Time:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

+ Don’t buy much the first time. When they deliver, they’ll enclose a 15% coupon and free shipping on your next order.<\/p>\n

+ It takes two hours to fix it the first time. Only two minutes the second time.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I hate MR-16s — Part 2. <\/strong><\/span>This is an MR-16 light bulb.<\/p>\n

\"MR-16\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s a piece of drek. After spending an hour fiddling to get an MR-16 track light fixture working yesterday, I awake this morning to find one of the other MR-16s blown.<\/p>\n

Today, up on the ladder. More fiddling. More coaxing. Yuch.<\/p>\n

Favorite New Yorker Valentine’s Day cartoons.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"ValentineDAy1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"ValentineDAy2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"ValentineDAy3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A Jewish Valentine. How to wave a towel.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

No matter what this husband did in bed; his wife never achieved an orgasm… so they decide to consult their Rabbi.<\/p>\n

The Rabbi listens to their story, strokes his beard, and makes the following suggestion: ‘Hire a strapping young man. While the two of you are making love, have the young man wave a towel over you.’
\nThat will help your wife fantasize and should bring on an orgasm.<\/p>\n

So they go home and follow the Rabbi’s advice. They hire a handsome young man and\u00a0 he waves a towel over them as they make love. It does not help and the wife is still unsatisfied.
\nPerplexed, they go back to the Rabbi.<\/p>\n

‘Okay,’ he says to the husband, ‘Try it reversed. Have the young man make love to your wife and you wave the towel over them.’<\/p>\n

Once again, they follow the Rabbi’s advice. They go home and hire the same strapping young man.<\/p>\n

The young man gets into bed with the wife and the husband waves the towel.<\/p>\n

The young man gets to work with great enthusiasm and soon the woman has an enormous, room shaking, ear-splitting screaming orgasm.<\/p>\n

The husband smiles, looks at the young man and says to him triumphantly,<\/p>\n

‘See that, you schmuck? THAT’S how you wave a towel!<\/p>\n

\"HarryNewton\"<\/a>
\nHarry Newton is ecstatic. Susan’s cousin been doing extensive research into the family history has discovered that Susan’s grandfather’s grandfather who migrated from Connecticut to Australia was married to a Cherokee Indian woman, named Olive Branch. When I die, Susan will change her name to Sitting Shiva. Look it up on Wikipedia.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The best place to begin your own search for your fun relatives is on Ancestry.com.<\/strong><\/a> Maybe Olive Branch will help Eleanor get into the college of her choice? She certainly looks intelligent enough to get into MIT (not Harvard).<\/p>\n

\"EleanorIntelligent\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Eleanor last weekend photographed and assessed by a totally objective (and smitten) grandfather, using a Nikon D7100 (a gorgeous, but heavy piece of equipment). You must use a DSLR, like the D7100,\u00a0 to shoot babies. Point and shoot cameras (even my beloved Canon G16) have too much shutter lag. A DSLR is typically instantaneous.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n