Why our government is incompetent

Dear IAN K WILLIS,

This refers to the application you recently submitted to this office for the position shown below:

Position: Park Ranger (Interpretation)
Series/Grade: 0025-05
Vacancy ID: 286172
Agency:
Considered For: Human Resources Office
Duty Location: Yellowstone Natl Park, WY


Please note: At this time only preference eligibles (veterans) have been certified to the hiring official.

...Therefore, your name will not be referred to the hiring official at this time. If we receive a request from the hiring official for additional candidates, your application will again be reviewed for possible referral.

There's always Taco Bell right?

The Double Dip

It seems like the market is losing traction. All that good data that came out today and no results...

The double dip is nigh.

I'm shorting the hell out of the market. I know this is going to look like lackluster timing, but damn it, I'm not gonna miss it this time! So better a tad early and miss a good (short) entry point spike, than too late.

...walking away from the screen.

For those of you who don't watch SNL anymore

For those of you who don't watch SNL anymore, I don't blame you. It is largely crap and has been degenerating for years. However, I did enjoy this "Obama address".



You'll notice that I have largely avoided commenting on our new president... I think that is for the best, to say "I told you so" to all the people who believed that "change" crap from a guy who never spoke a word of substance... well, that's just too easy, since it was that obvious, there is no satisfaction in exercising my "I told you so" rights.

Change cannot be achieved from within the bounds of a system designed to exclude the possibility of change.

I'll start bragging again after the market double dip that's kicking off over the next couple days to maybe three weeks. Although, I'll brag right now that I called the short term top on the silver market within minutes and sold with awesome timing.

Cheers!

Happy Halloween!

I normally avoid the crap on MarketWatch.com, but I just happened by today to keep up with the "mainstream" deception they call "news" and I found this little gem. Cracked me right up!



Goldman's 'Chainsaw Massacre' Halloween party
Vote: Best costume from your favorite horror films worn by 23 celebrities


ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Yes, Halloween is a perfect holiday to commemorate how the Goldman Conspiracy and Wall Street's other too-greedy-to-fail gangster banks have returned from the dead, like mummies, ghouls, zombies and vampires, rising out of their tombs, crypts, catacombs and mausoleums to suck the bloody retirement funds from the souls of living and unborn future generations.

Great little read!

Oh, and today's picture is the Jack-O-Lantern I carved last week for Halloween. I didn't think anybody would get the joke of a Lloyd Blankenfein Pumpkin, so I went with the next scariest thing, Hitler-O-lantern!

Cheers and Happy Halloween!

Correction

Perhaps I'll regret this, but it seems as though there is a major short term Dollar bounce / Gold correction brewing up shortly.

I'm pretty sure about this so I've taken profits heavily (and offset it by taking some tax losses) on Gold and Silver related securities.

I expect to be getting back in around the 1st of December for the December through February run-up. Good luck out there!

and Don't forget to check out my Stewart Island Northwest Circuit post below if you were checking in infrequently and waiting on travel updates. I'll try to get the Fiordlands post done sometime soon!

Cheers!

The NorthWest Circuit

Here's a little throw back to where I stopped doing travel updates.



So, after I left the ice, haggard as I was, I decided that I would wait in New Zealand until Jana finished her Antarctic deployment as well. But, as you might guess if you know me, I wasn't about to wait around in the city for her for a whole month. There exist far better ways to spend one's time! So I headed again south, to the far end of the South Island and across the straight to Stewart Island, almost the entirety of which is in Rakiura National Park and I began, immediately hiking the Northwest Circuit, a 90 mile, ten day trek tripping over roots and slogging and sticking in nasty mud under relentless sandfly assault. Sandflies are something akin to a gnat, or a midge, depending on where you hail from, but they have a vicious little bite and come in the millions... no exaggeration, it is not uncommon to be swarmed by multiple thousands of the little bastards.




I don't tend to do things the easy way, and not being willing to pay for storage in Invercargill, I brought all my travel stuff and clothing around the whole circuit with me... Who goes backpacking with an electric razor? Only madmen and the perversely lazy. So I was looking at a 70lb pack when it started and of course, I didn't use the hut system either, which would have spared me bringing a tent and the warmer sleeping bag.

This may have been a bit of a mistake as the bush on Stewart Island is amazingly dense and finding a tent pad often took many hours of crashing through thick, thick scrub.





But, the solitude that this afforded me was amazing. Having mile long beaches to myself.



Watching the penguins come in from sea at night. The sea lion encounters and most interesting of all. The Kiwi birds. That unique flightless bird found only in New Zealand, and on Stewart Island they are exceptionally large. Like a turkey. Thought I was being attacked by a rabid possum when I first saw one. I heard something off in the brush that sounded big, so I stalked out to find it, and sure enough I heard a feirce growl / snarl /squak and something heavy came crashing through the brush directly at me. Two Kiwi on the attack! Shite! I about had a heart attack before they saw me and veered off. I ended up following them a bit (bad practice, I know) and climbing a tree to attempt an arial photo, sadly, none of which really came out.






I pretty much destroyed both my camera and a relatively new pair of boots (never buy timberlands) on that trip, but it was an astonishing ten days. Time and money very well spent.






And when I returned to the South Island to spend a few days recovering I learned that an old friend was nearby. And that was the beginning of an epic new adventure in the Fiordlands one of the most rugged and unforgiving places on earth.

story coming soon!

Milking the Emergence of Clean Green Fascism

Todays update is my latest personal stock pick.

A123 Systems

Ticker: "AONE" on the NASDAQ

They are the latest and greatest in lithium battery technology and they're really running the gamut from batteries for distributed power generation and grid stabilization activities to consumer batteries (Dewalt's new 36 volt cordless power tools, think cordless sawzall yeah!, to the big one, hybrid and plug-in electric vehicle batteries, and they have some of the best products for all those markets all of which have a LOT of room for growth especially given the recent governmental agendas.

Oh yeah, and they've also set up a lot of major strategic alliances with the big auto makers, including those emerging in China. And, of course, the DoD is into this stuff as well.

I expect these guys are going to be dominating the battery market shortly.

The only downside I see is a risk of lithium supply dry up, but I've studied that pretty heavily over the past couple of years and I think their involvement with China should keep them well supplied for the heavy mid-term. So yup!

Seems like a no brainer for a long term hold to me. (Assuming the next securities crash doesn't break the clean-green fascism movement, hehe, in which case, money or no, I wouldn't mind at all) =)

Just wish I was able to get in on the IPO... I always discover this stuff a hair late.

ah, well.



photo taken this spring in Venice Italy =)