June 27, 2002

 
So I watched Tomb Raider last night on DVD. You know how sometimes people will say something like, "Stupid does not even begin to describe this movie"? Well, stupid really does begin to describe this movie. There are plot holes here big enough to drive a tank through, and that's always unforgivable in my book, even if Angelina Jolie's covered breasts seem to be prominently thrust into every scene. (Reportedly filmmakers, unable to find any woman in the world with the bizarro proportions of video game star Lara Croft's thin waist and 40DD breasts, settled for Jolie's thin waist and padded 36C.)

Thematically the film touches on the some interesting ideas without having anything to say about them, but it gives the work an emotional element altogether lacking from director Simon West's previous big hit, Con Air. Tomb Raider also deserves its props for top-notch special effects.

Sadly, the character motivations are either confused, wrong, or both, and good luck figuring out why Lara (or anyone else) does what she does when she does it. I won't delve into it and give things away, but suffice to say that given the amount of money they obviously poured into this project, a better script could have yielded a really good movie. Instead, we get something approaching stupidity. For 9 out of 10 action flicks, such is Hollywood.

Dennis invited me to join his outdoor co-ed soccer team for July, so I'll be spending my Monday evenings up in Portland trying to run up and down the field without my body falling apart. It's a rec league (meaning non-competitve) so I'm hoping that fun will be the order of the day. If nothing else, it should be a great way to get in some exercise.

 June 26, 2002

 
Got a message from Erin late last night. She's doing great. Guess the woman she's had her home stay with is just as active as Erin, so it's been two peas in a pod, so to speak. The full group will reassemble tomorrow and head to Aix en Provence on the way to Annecy and ultimately Paris. So far, so good.

Last night, for the first time in a couple of years, I went out to Bush Park and took part in a soccer scrimmage. Last time I did this I bunged up my knee a bit, and that effectively knocked me out of soccer and running and basketball and walking straight and just about every other physical activity I can think of. But you know what? Soccer is worth that risk to me. I might be dreadfully out of shape (pretty much, yeah), but I had more fun playing for 90 minutes than I think I've ever had shooting hoops or hitting a tennis ball or whatever. Maybe it's a weird World Cup-inspired euphoria, but I sure do love that game.

Assuming my body holds up, I'm planning to play in every Tuesday and Thursday scrimmage I can for the rest of the summer.

Dennis sent me an email raising some interesting issues with the civil rights-killing USA Patriot Act passed last year in the hysteria over the war on terror. I have a number of comments regarding this now-approved and implemented legislation.

First, and perhaps most obvious, is that foreign visitors are no longer welcome in the United States. The authors clearly believe, rightly or wrongly, that the US Constitution applies only to US citizens. As foreign nationals can now be held indefinitely incommunicado without charges, left bereft of a right to legal counsel, and detained for a variety of offenses which are not technically against any law (US or international), I would suggest that any non-US citizen traveling in the US does so at their extreme peril.

You would think that all of the above might be theory and that actual practice would work out differently, but there are already foreigners incarcerated in the manner described above. This isn't idle speculation about a potential future. This is here and now.

Of more immediate concern to most of us (presumably my limited readership is primarily US citizenry) are the broad powers granted law enforcement agencies to wiretap, search, and seize without much of a civil rights safeguard. I have long advocated people use privacy protection tools wherever available (like PGP for encrypting email). I am convinced this alone is inadequate, but there are few options available. I know I sound like a conspiracy theorist in saying so, but I would not be surprised if the National Security Agency (NSA) and its affiliates have taps on virtually all electronic communications outside and within the United States.

Historically the problem with intelligence gathering agencies isn't that they don't have the information, it's that they don't have the ability to sift through the mass of information they do have in order to form a coherent picture. In this bulk of world-wide information lies the last refuge of personal privacy, and sadly, the last oasis of safety for those who would attack the United States.

Read the Electronic Frontier Foundation's analysis.

 June 25, 2002

 
Went out to Western Oregon University in Monmouth yesterday to pay for one of Erin's summer classes. Pleasant drive, pretty campus.

Hung out with Mom and Dad a bit last night. Went out to dinner at Shari's, where I had some of the fruits and vegetables that I've not gotten enough of since Erin went to France. Fair amount of nutrition in SlimFast shakes, but I still should be doing an apple a day.

I've posted photos from my Tour of Homes excursions at http://homepage.mac.com/tydavison/PhotoAlbum3.html. The captions are ideas as they relate to our own house remodel plans. You can also see the old LAN party movie or download my public PGP key if you're so inclined.

Current meltdown in the stock market's second quarter has everything to do with investor confidence. You can't have accountants who don't account, CEOs who are overpaid and who underperform, or corporate boards who appear asleep at the wheel. I believe the market is reacting primarily to these confidence-type situations, and the $3 trillion sitting on the sidelines in money market funds will likely stay there until investor confidence is restored.

In the meantime, I'm not leaving the market. She may be a fickle mistress, but I love her anyway. Hehe. I think present lows offer outstanding buying opportunities, some of which we're unlikely to see again for a number of years. Aquila (ILA-NYSE)—which I've mentioned before in this space—is busy restructuring itself, cutting its dividend, and getting the heck out of the much-maligned energy trading business. Assuming they're not guilty of doing anything that Enron and Dynergy have done (and Aquila claims they're not), I believe the difficulties to be short-term and their stock price of around $10 a share to be a really good buy looking at a 3- to 5-year time horizon. As I've said before, it's not a core holding, but as something to take a chance on, I think it's better than most.

A more solid pick would be something along the lines of MDU Resources, Inc. (MDU-NYSE). I don't think it has nearly the upside of Aquila, but I don't think it has nearly the downside risk either. I like its 3- to 5-year chances as well.

Another area where I see good prospects is pharmaceuticals. Pfizer, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson all have appeal. I think the biggest threat here is that the government will allow importers to bring drugs into the US which these companies sell for less overseas. (That importation is current illegal.) Why Amercian consumers should have to subsidize foreign markets is beyond me, and although such legislation probably should be passed, never underestimate the power of the drug lobby. Either way though, these are solid companies worth owning (IMHO), and any of them could likely be considered a core holding for a portfolio.

[In the interest of disclosure: I own Aquila and MDU shares, and my father-in-law works for Johnson & Johnson.]

 June 22, 2002

 
Another night of virtually no sleep since now World Cup quarterfinals are upon us. I got two hours from 2 AM to 4 AM and another three hours from 8 AM to 11 AM. Note to everyone in the civilized world, please do not call before noon. Thank you

Since I was up and Mom and Dad were headed there anyway, we all headed over to the new Lowe's out by the airport. It's less than half a mile from Home Depot, but it offers significant improvements in a variety of ways. Easy driving access is probably foremost among these. Home Depot has always been a real pain in the patootie. Lowe's is easy. Also, Lowe's selection of products appears to me to be larger in every category. I think it's just a bigger store than Home Depot. Finally, like Home Depot they have a lowest price guarantee. How both stores can offer this I have no idea, but there it is. The bottom line is that you can probably expect comparable pricing whether you shop at one or the other. Given what I saw today, for better or for worse, I can't think of a reason to shop at Home Depot again.

I did another set of houses on the Tour of Homes last night. This group was located out south, and one obvious difference between here and west Salem is that you can add another $50,000 to $100,000 to the prices of the houses out south. That's got to be land value primarily, because the home in west were every bit as nice as the ones in the south. UPDATE: This turns out not to be true; I had housing prices in the west wrong. Prices are comparable.

Another thing I noticed was that in the south virtually every house is beige. Setting aside for a moment that some of the structural designs were quite handsome, how hard is it to paint the exterior something other than a shade of tan? Or, barring that, how about a trim color with some pizazz? Very little pizazz will do. I was reminded of Apple's old beige box commercials for the original iMac: What are designers, stuck in thinking jail? It simply can't be that difficult to find a main or trim color other than beige, but that is all I saw for house after house, neighborhood after neighborhood. (It's not like I think our brown house is any great shakes, but at least it's not a brown house in a neighborhood of brown houses.)

Those two general observations aside, I found a number of elements that I wouldn't mind incorporating into our own home. Mostly it's lighting and window things, but there was a kitchen in one of the houses that I thought was pretty neat. (Unfortunately that particular home's backyard was right next to a very busy road, violating the first three rules of real estate: location, location, location. A home can be remodeled, having a busy road in your back yard is forever.)

One element common to all the high-end homes is vaulted ceilings. Most have at least 12' high ceilings in common rooms, sometimes in bedrooms as well, and the really high-end houses had 12' to 18' high ceilings everywhere. In fact, my favorite home of all I've seen has 18' ceilings in much of it, and they add a spaciousness and grandeur which is breathtaking. That home, located in west Salem incidentally, was about the same square footage as our house, but given the feeling of openness it provides you'd think it was twice as big. When we remodel the upstairs (since the roof is coming off anyway), I am sure that we will seriously consider vaulting the ceilings.

 June 18, 2002

 
I drove out to West Salem last night to take in 12 houses on this year's Tour of Homes. The price tags ranged from roughly $400,000 to $165,000, with the best of the lot being one at about $300k. In short, I saw and took pictures of a lot of really interesting homes, particularly features which I wouldn't mind incorporating into our own little castle. There are 33 houses on the Tour this year, and I expect that I'll cover 20-some of them this week. Fun!

 June 17, 2002

 
Hope all you fathers out there had a great one yesterday. Us Davisons got together at Ma and Pa's place for lunch and an afternoon of hangin' out. As one might expect, we had a really good time.

Erin wasn't able to join us, of course, but I talked with her later in the day for about 10 minutes, and she and her kids are having a great experience. They visited the D-Day sites yesterday, and they've got Mt. St. Michel today.

After I got off the phone with Erin, I finished installing a new kitchen faucet I bought at Fred Meyer's Home & Garden center. I'm no plumber, but it wasn't all that hard to put the pieces together. I think removal of the old faucet was maybe the hardest thing, because it wasn't easy to get at all the fittings under the sink.

Definitely a job that had to be done, though. The faucet was dripping constantly, and we could only keep the hot water from dripping by tightening the hot water handle down so much that you it was almost impossible to turn on. We tried to do a washer and seat replacement but none of the hardware stores carried the specific pieces we needed. So I finally gave in and bought a new single-lever unit. So far, so good. Hope Erin likes it. hehe.

As it announced it would last week, Aquila cut its sky-high dividend and its earnings estimates for 2002. What's happening is that they're attempting to transition out of a lot of their energy trading business and into more traditional utility revenue streams. This has driven their share price down to a 14-year low, and I continue to think that as a non-core, somewhat risky investment, the 3-to-5 year potential here is lucrative. Even with the dividend cut—they were paying a goofy 11.43 percent as of Friday—they'll be paying out at a very respectable range. Earnings estimates dropped from $2 a share to $1.20-$1.30, and some job cuts in Aquila's energy trading arm are in the offing in addition to about $900 million of new stock and bond offerings for liquidity purposes.

None of this worries me particularly in the 3-to-5 year horizon. I see this as a temporary transitional period on the road to long-term growth, and as a very good opportunity to buy in at a very low price. The SEC is investigating some of Aquila's energy trades in the California energy crisis, but thus far the company has said they made no improper trades. Assuming that is true, no worries. If they're not being forthright, well, that's where the risk lies in my opinion. I don't think Aquila would pull an Enron, but who wants to own shares in a company you can't trust? As the Enron implosion proved, not many people. I'm assuming Aquila has been above-board in their actions, but if not, well, that's why this isn't a stock you want to bet the farm on.

Personally, I'm adding shares to my account, though.

 June 15, 2002

 
I installed a keyless entry system for our garage door this afternoon. Now I can stop worrying about locking myself out of the house. It also means I don't have to take my keys when I go shoot hoops in the park.

Installation was pretty easy. Really, it was just a matter of figuring out where I wanted the box to be, screwing it down, and punching some buttons. Total cost was $57 and about 25 minutes of time. I'd call it a deal.

I should have a song, Dorian Grey, posted in MP3 format within the next several days. It's only tangentially related to Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey, referencing little except the themes of superficiality of image and the consequences of a pitiable egomaniacal psychology.

Speaking of music, I've been listening to a little bit of Tool lately, and although they've got some nice riffs, wow, what a pretentious bunch. I've been listening to their live album, Salival, and while the music is by turns good and repetitive but the talk to the audience is reminiscent of the posing once heard by '70s rock bands. I think it's even worse, but it's been a bit since I listened to any '70s live albums so I could be remembering things wrong. Anyway, my favorite tunes are Pushit, You Lied, and Lamc (once the music actually starts, which is a sadly 7 minutes into this 10 minute long song). If you like metal, you might check out Tool and see what you think.

 June 14, 2002

 
It's been an absolutely crazy week. Erin finished up another good year at school on Wednesday. Then she turned around and flew out for Paris on Thursday morning. That makes me sound uninvolved, but trust me, this took a substantial block o' Ty's time.

I am happy to report that Erin called from Paris and that she and her kids are having a great time already. As you may recall, these students were hand-picked, and she has a lot of faith and confidence in them. I suspect that her vetting process was sufficient to get all really good kids, but the proof is in the pudding as they say. We'll know for sure when they return on July 3, but at least initially things are off to a very good start.

For those interested, here's where she'll be staying on the trip along with some of the day's activities:

June 13: Depart for Paris
June 14-15: Paris
June 16 Bayeux (Giverny, Arromanches)
June 17: St. Malo (Bayeux Tapestry, Mt. St. Michel)
June 18: Amboise
June 19-26: Perpignan (including home stay)
June 27: Aix en Provence
June 28-29: Annecy (excursion to Chamonix)
June 30-July 3: Paris (Louvre, Versaille, Musée d'Orsay)
July 3: Depart for US/Arrive Portland, Oregon

It's not as long as the trip Erin and I took in the summer of 2000, but what you bet she and her kids have a great time?

Dennis came down from Hillsboro to stay over and watch the US efforts in the World Cup. We walked the neighborhood, peered at houses for sale, watched the Red Wings Stanley Cup victory on TV, hung out, and ate pizza. They evening World Cup games weren't nearly as important or interesting to us as the 4:25 AM US match, but they proved entertaining nonetheless. I'll refrain from extended commentary on the US game since that's available in Sports, but I will say that it was great to have Dennis here to cheer along side me as the US backed its way into the second round.

 June 7, 2002

 
My sleep schedule is still messed up because of my choice to watch all the World Cup games—which have been very, very good by the way—but I'm still getting some stuff done during daylight hours. Today, for example, I finished up and mailed out all the Reach the Beach CD-ROMs. The gang from the beach house can expect their copy within the next few days.

Also, I picked up a Torx T8 screwdriver at Sears (I had T10 and T20, but no T8—figures), and swapped hard drives in Trinity. I'm fairly comfortable opening up computers, but that won't stop me from beating my chest and acting like a proud monkey for having accomplished this.

After I'd picked up the Torx T8 but before I'd done the swap, Erin and I went out to Rockin' Rogers for dinner. Since we were out in NE Salem anyway, we decided to go to the Pink Cadillac Market Street Rockin' Rogers instead of the one out south that's closer to home. This turned out to be a mistake. Service was poor, the restaurant dingy, and the general vibe was unhappy. This has never been the atmosphere at the SE restaurant, and let's face it, a '50s retro joint without fun is like a Teddy Bear without a head: Disturbing. I know I've mentioned Rockin' Rogers in a positive fashion before, but here's the new caveat: Commercial Street SE restaurant is a-okay, Market Street NE restaurant is not.

 June 5, 2002

 
As a member of the Police-Neighborhood Association Liaison Committee, I had the opportunity today to tour the City's dispatch/911 center and play with their new computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system. I suppose I should mention that it was running in simulation mode. The "Full on Inferno" I reported at my parents' house existed only in a virtual world.

The $1.9 million system replaces a CAD system the City acquired for free (because it was already antiquated) from another city in 1981.The new computers are Dell Windows 2000 Professional-based systems, which hopefully isn't as bad as it sounds. The software itself is clunky compared to most Mac applications, but it's hard not be thrilled with the drag-and-drop functionality of dispatching emergency vehicles. It makes one feel powerful.

The way everything works is this: On a main 21" CRT monitor the operator gets a map of the Marion and Polk county areas. You can zoom in and out, pan around, and attach incident reports to locations by right clicking on a Microsoft two-button scroll wheel mouse. This setup should work better than it does, and it's noticeably inferior to what you'd expect a Mac-implementation would be. That said, it's workable, easy to learn, and hard to screw up badly. All those things are crucial, and ultimately even if it could be better implemented, I'm confident it will prove more than sufficient as is and a strong step forward over the old system.

 June 3, 2002

 
I installed Mac OS X 10.1.4 on a 32 GB external FireWire hard drive this afternoon. It was a very smooth installation process with only a couple hiccups, but I'll save most of my comments for the Mac section, and those who are interested can lap up the details. Suffice to say my early impression is that Mac OS X is more than ready for prime time. It's easily better than any version of Windows I've ever used, but I realize that's not saying much.

Erin's 10 days away from taking off on her France trip, and I'm pondering just what and how much I want to accomplish while she's gone. Her trip runs June 13-July 3, so I'll have a few weeks to get in a lot of trouble. Well, order a lot of pizza anyway. Since daily World Cup games run through June 18, I'll have at least some of my life decided. Add in some yard work, some music, some visits with friends, and maybe it won't be so lousy.

I'm not worried about it, mind you. Erin and I handle emotional deprivation just fine. We're better and happier together, of course, but we're hardly joined at the hip. This will be the longest we've been apart since we were married—we've tried to limit separations to two weeks tops—so we'll see how it goes. I'm betting she'll have more fun than I will, but I'm pretty sure I'll be OK. (Family and friends are invited to stop by and make sure, though. Hehe.)

 June 2, 2002

 
I'm on a wacky World Cup watching schedule thanks to the games being played in Korea and Japan and telecast live. I've been up all night the last couple days and sleeping in the morning. Today, I woke up at 11:30 AM so I could be ready to meet with Dave and his new girlfriend Jill.

Jill is a marketing director for BiMart's institutional pharmacy department, and the upshot is that she travels extensively throughout the Northwest. Like Erin, she's a workaholic, but she struck me as very self-aware (particularly of this aspect of herself) and as possessing a wonderful sense of humor. This last bit means mainly that she seemed to laugh at my jokes. Hard not to like anybody who's willing to do that.

I love animals. Always have. Although I've never owned one personally, I'm particuarly fond of dogs and hope to have one or two someday. For anyone who owns a dog or is thinking about owning one, I recommend Good Owners, Great Dogs by Brian Kilcommons. Since I'm a relative novice when it comes to canines I could be completely wrong about it, but my impression is that this is a book that should be required reading for any potential dog owner. If you're interested, find it at your local library and see what you think. I found it very enlightening.

 June 1, 2002

 
I'm not saying Aquila (ILA-NYSE) is a core holding, but for those who can afford to take some risk with a small portion of their portfolio should seriously consider Aquila at this time. The company has been tarnished by being in the same energy trading industry as Enron and other lesser lights. Aquila, however, only has about 25 percent of its business in energy trading, and the remaining 70+ percent is traditional energy utility business. That latter 70+ percent more than covers the dividend.

Aquila closed Friday at $12.95 a share which is very close to its five year low (split adjusted) of $12.34. The 52-week high is $36.42. The current P/E is 6.04. The dividend yield is an astounding 9.69 percent. Frankly, I think this stock can easily triple within the 3-5 year time frame and that's not including the massive dividends.

I think Aquila is currently an obvious and strong buy but again not without some risk. Don't go putting 20 percent of your portfolio here. Still, if you can afford to take a flyer, Aquila is right now the most lucrative investment I've seen in some time. (Aquila also has a dividend reinvestment program in which dividends are reinvested at a 5 percent discount.)