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8:30 AM EST Friday, August 25, 2006: Yesterday spent doing due diligence on some new stuff. Nothing to report, EXCEPT I played tennis for the first time in 3 weeks and my tennis elbow didn't hurt. Rest, Aleve, icing, stretching and the shockabsorber bandage clearly work.

Australian mining stocks: After I returned from Australia, I bought a handful of Australian mining stocks. I figure that with China, India and the world economy booming, everyone will want more minerals. Australia has a lot of them. My stocks are BHP Billiton (BHP), Rio Tinto (RIO), Kagara Zinc (KZL), Zinifex (ZFX), Minara Resources (MRE), and Oxiana (OXR). My biggest holding is Kagara, whose management I visited and whom I'm most impressed with. You can buy Australian stocks through most large US brokers.

What a chart! This is the chart from yesterday's column.

This is what happened yesterday. It opened higher, then dropped.

What were the lawyers thinking? I've never believed in Nondisclosure / Confidentiality Agreements. Why would they be dealing with me if they didn't trust me? Anyho, I'm looking at an investment in some neat technology. They ask for an agreement. I send them a one-liner, which reads: "I promise not to reveal any information you tell me regarding XYZ Corp."

They send me their lawyers' four pager which includes more gobbledygook than I've ever seen in my entire life, including, "All obligations under this Agreement shall survive change or termination of the parties' business relationship, if any, and the confidentiality obligation set forth in Section 2 shall survive any termination of this Agreement. This Agreement may be executed by facsimile and in two counterparts, each of which shall be deemed an original but all of which together shall constitute one and the same instrument." I bet the lawyers got paid by the polysyllable.

How to speed up your PC:
1. Remove the programs that came with the machine which you don't use -- like AOL, RealPlayer, software updates. You do this through Control Panel and Add/Remove programs.
2. Stop software from starting when you boot up. Many programs get themselves going so they'll start faster when you need them. You don't need these little baby programs slowing your machine down. You do this Run/Msconfig/Startup.
3. Empty your recycle bin. Delete stuff off your hard disk you're no longer using and archive old stuff to a CD. You don't want to be running a PC with a full hard drive.
4. Get rid of stuff on your Desktop you're no longer using.
5. Defragment your hard drive. You do this by rightclicking My Computer. Then leftclicking your C drive -- Properties/Tools/Defragmentation.
6. Buy more RAM memory. If have a laptop, check how much memory it will take. A friend asked me to help him with memory for Dell Latitude X200. He has 256 megs of RAM. He should have at least 512. I called Dell, a truly painful experience. My friend's laptop has only one memory slot, so I can't upgrade it to 512 by throwing in a second 256 meg card. I need to throw out his 256 and replace it with a 512 card, for which Dell wants $137.95 -- but which others on the Internet are selling for $99.98.
For more on speeding up your sluggish PC, click here or Click here.

So sad; Police crack down on striptease funerals.
Wed Aug 23, 11:09 AM ET
BEIJING (Reuters) - Striptease send-offs at funerals may become a thing of the past in east China after five people were arrested for organizing the intimate farewells, state media reported on Wednesday.

Police swooped last week after two groups of strippers gave "obscene performances" at a farmer's funeral in Donghai County, Jiangsu province, Xinhua news agency said. The disrobing served a higher purpose, the report noted.

"Striptease used to be a common practice at funerals in Donghai's rural areas to allure viewers," it said. "Local villagers believe that the more people who attend the funeral, the more the dead person is honored."

Wealthy families often employed two troupes of performers to attract a crowd. Two hundred showed up at last week's funeral.

Five strippers were detained and local officials "issued notices concerning funeral management," Xinhua said. Now village officials must submit plans for funerals within 12 hours after a villager dies. And residents can report "funeral misdeeds" on a hotline, the report said.

Nude fountain bather defies police
Thu Aug 24, 8:57 AM ET
BERLIN (Reuters) - A homeless woman refuses to stop bathing naked in Munich's public fountains despite being repeatedly fined for breaking public nudity laws.

Bild newspaper reported Thursday the 44-year-old woman named "Bille," who weighs more than 300 pounds, can be seen almost every day with her bottles of soap and shampoo bathing in one of the Bavarian capital's 183 public fountains. "She's already been charged on 21 occasions for such things as causing public disturbance as well as breaking and entering," a Munich police spokesman said.

A social worker told Bild that Bille keeps rejecting a room in a homeless center.

"We can't force her," he said.

Texans are very smart.
Amy, a blonde Texan city girl, marries a Texas rancher. One morning, he tells her, "The artificial-insemination man is coming over to impregnate one of our cows today. You'll find the cow, because I drove a nail into the two-by-four just above the cow's stall in the barn."

After a while, the artificial-insemination man arrives and knocks on the front door. Amy takes him down the barn. They walk along a long row of cows and when she sees the nail, she tells him: "This is the one..... right here."

Impressed by the ditzy blonde, the man asks, "Tell me little lady, how did you know this is the cow to be bred?"

"That's simple. By the nail over its stall," Amy explains very confidently.

Then the man asks, "What's the nail for?"

She turns to walk away, and with complete confidence, says: "I guess it's to hang your pants on...."

The ultimate logic. First hand story:
"Last year I replaced all the windows in my house with those expensive double-pane energy-efficient kind.

"Yesterday, I got a call from the contractor who installed them. He was complaining that the windows had been installed a whole year ago and I hadn't paid for them yet.

"Hellloooo? Now just because I'm blonde doesn't mean that I am automatically stupid. So I told him just exactly what his fast- talking sales guy had told ME last year... namely, that in just ONE YEAR these windows would pay for themselves!

"Helllooooo"? (I told him). "It's been a year"

Third request: You must watch this commercial.

I don't do this often (except twice this week already). But you MUST go to Nike.com, wait for it to load and then play the Sharapova commercial. The song is from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. Remember, it was Maria who sung this ong in West Side Story. And Sharapova's first name is.... Whoever made this commercial is a creative genius.

Have a great weekend. Hug the spouse, the kids and the grandkids.

This column is about my personal search for the perfect investment. I don't give investment advice. For that you have to be registered with regulatory authorities, which I am not. I am a reporter and an investor. I make my daily column -- Monday through Friday -- freely available for three reasons: Writing is good for sorting things out in my brain. Second, the column is research for a book I'm writing called "In Search of the Perfect Investment." Third, I encourage my readers to send me their ideas, concerns and experiences. That way we can all learn together. My email address is . You can't click on my email address. You have to re-type it . This protects me from software scanning the Internet for email addresses to spam. I have no role in choosing the Google ads. Thus I cannot endorse any, though some look mighty interesting. If you click on a link, Google may send me money. Please note I'm not suggesting you do. That money, if there is any, may help pay Claire's law school tuition. Read more about Google AdSense, click here and here.
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