Patrick's Rants

These are the result of my window sill tomatoes. I have the big beef hybrid (which grew to about 2 1/2″ across in the confines of the pot) and romas, which were so sweet to bite into that my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

These tomatoes were grown in a 12″ pot, worm compost, commercial compost, coconut coir and some secret (all organic) ingredients make for window sill gardening.

I blinked on 1000 shares of ABAT. I just did not feel like I could keep holding a single stock so heavily in my account and I sold for slightly over half of what I paid. This doesn’t mean that I’m completely out, but I just couldn’t hold that much weight in a single stock comfortably. I’m now selling covered calls on what I have left. These are call options on the remaining shares that I hold, selling them on the $2.50 strike, next month out. It’s a long slow way to “recover” from the beating these shares have taken.

On the flip side of this, it doesn’t appear – based on a quick glance at the news – that any attorneys have picked up their needed lead plaintiff yet.

Only time will tell if I blinked too soon or if I will recover my outlay.

The world didn’t end? Awkward!

The prediction is that the biblical rapture will hit us at 6:00pm local time (because it’s gonna wash over the world starting at 6:00pm local time in New Zealand). Believers will simply vanish off the face of the earth. So in case I’m wrong and it really does happen, can I have your car?

It’s a long read, but if you can muddle your way through it, Groklaw has the Barnes & Noble legal response to Microsoft. In case anyone was wondering, this is exactly what I don’t like about the Redmond giant. They are using bogus, unrelated patents, questionable non disclosure agreements and bullying tactics to extract licensing fees from unrelated products or extinguish them from the marketplace.

Several of B&N’s responses are essentially, “Microsoft told us we had to promise that what they told us was a secret, before they told us what they say we did wrong.” Patents are public information so where’s the secret?

The bottom line is that Microsoft appears to want to control who and how the Android operating system, developed by Google, is used. Suddenly, the agreement with Nokia (that caused a Friday sickout at Nokia) seems just a little more sinister. They want complete dominance over which operating systems are used and which features are available to users of other “smart” phones, computing pads, and e-book readers. This is overreaching, overbearing and, when the company is as big as Microsoft, illegally anti-competitive. The last anti-trust suit did too little and did not put today’s version of Big Oil in its place. I expect calls for MS to be broken into three or more pieces to resurface, especially with them buying Skype for $8.5 billion.

The volume is a little loud, adjust your speakers, and then learn how to have tomatoes year round.

Henry Blodget, writer for Business Insider, writes that the Republicans are idiots. He does more tamely state it though in his article, “Sorry, Republicans, The Economy Is Not Crappy Because Of “Uncertainty” About Taxes And Regulation”.

Read it and weep, John Boehner.

I would like to add my thanks along side Sara Palin’s. Thank you George Bush for killing Osama bin Laden. Oh, I know you don’t want to take the credit since you were probably walking around your “ranch” with Barney, looking for some sticks to sharpen or something. But I know, and Sara knows, that this would have never happened without you. I know that you masterfully crafted this plan to kill him two years after Obama took the oath of office so that Palin could crow about GOP strength and resolve (and never once mention Obama, scared Sara? “First, they ignore you”) and fire up the kettle. Wait, Tea Partiers and Ron Paul want us to put up a fence around the US and let the world fall apart without any intervention from us.

I know, and Sara knows, that if we hadn’t gone after Saddam Hussein, we might have had Osama in the hills of Tora Bora. We might have killed or captured Osama in 2002 or 2003 or… I know, and Sara knows, that we could have been on the way to cleaning up in Afghanistan before the last elections if we had not gone after Weapons of Mass Deception. Cheney and Scooter and Rove would not have had to break the law by outing Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. We would not be facing a more independent and decentralized Al Qaida that is less beholden to Osama than an ideal.

I know that Barrack Obama actually signed the order to conduct this actual operation, but he wouldn’t have been able to do it without George’s leadership and feigned ignorance of bin Laden while chasing illusionary “nucular” bombs in Iraq.

Thank you for staying home and not taking any credit George Bush. Thank you.

Obama announced to the country last night that US troops killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. His body has reportedly been buried at sea. The war on terror has taken a new turn. I’m not sure how the rest of Al Qaida will take this news, they’ve been operating without direct leadership from bin Laden for years.

This morning has a different feel for me. On 9/11 I walked my kids to school, knowing that the East coast of the US was erupting. I pondered what kind of life my then unborn youngest child would have, what kind of world she would grow up in. Today I feel more optimism for that future.