In my journal I wrote a couple weeks ago about the prices versus availability of precious metals, particularly silver. It seems to be even worse now, if I can take Kitco's selling site to be any indication.

Your choices are either to buy a large scale bars (the cheapest of which is an $11,000 silver bar), requiring a substantial cash outlay if you're middle or working class, or you can buy the sub 1 oz coins (and the Olympic edition Gold Maple), all of which trade at a substantial premium above spot price. Kitco still seems to be only offering a buy premium on silver at the moment.

More telling, I think, is that while gold and silver have been fairly volatile, trading up and down over the last week, the lease rates have been steadily climbing. Make of that what you will, but I think somebody somewhere knows that there's another time bomb ticking in the financial infrastructure somewhere. 2009 could be an interesting year in the so-called Chinese sense of the word.

Okay, start here.

Now, go to YouTube and if you have a Google or YouTube account, go post a comment on a video.

I reiterate: AWESOME!

Why is gold and and especially silver not higher in price? I challenge you to find a place where you can actually buy small unit silver like Silver Eagles and Silver Maples at anything close to the spot price. Not a pool or investment account, but a transaction where the end result is you getting shiny bits of metal in your grubby paws. The official bid price is not telling the whole story. As I write this, the spot price for silver is 12.21, but the 800 pound gorilla of precious metals, Kitco will buy Silver Maples and Eagles from you at 13.56, or 11% ABOVE spot. For those of you unaware, when dealing in immediate settlement, a commodities broker usually buys at a certain percentage below spot, and sells at a percentage above spot. This is how they make money, regardless of the market price. I've never seen a broker buying above spot, and 11% above spot is crazy high. Normally, I would consider a broker who tried to sell to me at 11% above spot a rip-off artist (3 to 4% is more normal), but they are voluntarily paying that high a premium to get their hands on the stuff. So, just what's going on here?

The only sensible reasons I can think of for them doing this is either A) They have contractual obligations to provide physical metal to someone, maybe to keep a pool account solid and the premium they are paying is cheaper than any sort of penalty they would have to pay, or B) They have a very good reason to expect that silver will increase in price dramatically in the short-term. If you can meet my challenge, then you should be able to make a tidy sum in arbitrage. Good luck with that.

Born June 26, 1923. Beer delivery man, trombonist, private pilot, real estage agent, deputy sheriff, K-mart appliance department manager, fireman aboard the Sangamon-class Suwannee in the Pacific theater of WWII, my mom's stepdad, but her real dad and my grandpa in all the ways that really matter, died on the morning of September 10, 2008 due to an aortic aneurysm. Growing up, I spent a few weeks every summer with my grandparents, and he was the guy responsible for my love of big band and jazz music. So, I'll forgive him for mocking my love of Led Zeppelin when I was a teenager. :-)

This event was not unexpected, as he beat doctors' estimates of longevity by damn near two years, but now that the time has come, it's still hard to say goodbye. I love you, Gramps.

After seeing the first Seinfeld Microsoft ad I'm totally sold! I went out and bought eight licenses for Windows Vista Ultimate right after viewing! I'm muking and paving my Linux boxes, and upgrading my XP ones. I even bought copies for my two PPC Mac laptops. It doesn't work on them, but I just stick the little license tags on them to because it makes me feel so good to see it.

Seriously, WTF? A 90 second ad for a computer software company that doesn't mention computers at all until the 75-second mark? I figure the standard 30 second spot will be the last 30 seconds (The first 60 seconds is the throwaway gag), but once again, it's Microsoft talking about all this wonderful software they'll make "someday".

The ad itself is mildly amusing, but these are the kind of ads that are supposed to make people buy Vista? At least the Mohave thing was about their actual products. This is a brand-building ad of the kind a new 90s internet startup would spend half their venture capital on to air during the Superbowl. Does Microsoft really need to have their name out there more? Well, yeah, brand-building is an ongoing task, but last I heard Microsoft is having product affinity problems, not brand-awareness issues. Hell, people are only too aware of the Microsoft brand, and the word on the street is "avoid their new thing if you can. XP is better." I'm not saying that viewpoint was or is accurate. I don't know enough about Vista to judge[1]. But, at least in marketing, perception is reality.

I do have to say that between the "Bill's last day" video and this one, he's shown that he's got a pretty good sense of comedic timing. But I know lots of funny people. It doesn't mean I'm buying an operating system from them.

[1] - I know XP is better for me because I have a driver for some music hardware I own that is XP only[2].

[2] - Well, It's been a while since I checked: Digitech GNX4 drivers are available for Vista now. I'm getting a free copy of Vista Ultimate later this month, so maybe I'll give it a whirl. So I guess the ad sorta worked after all. :-) Note that only because Microsoft is giving it away to me, and my hardware is now supported will I contemplate the upgrade. The features of Vista are not compelling enough to me on its own merits to justify the $110 gray-market upgrade price, much less the >$200 price that MS charges.

I just read some sad news on Bloomberg news - Apple CEO Steve Jobs was found dead in his California home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his Macs and iPods, there's no denying his contributions to personal computing. Truly an American icon.

Story here

So, basically almost half of Americans think that Obama is a straight-shooter and over half think McCain is? Or at least, since there's no reference to the "unsure" crowd, perhaps I should phrase it differently: Essentially half the American populace believe that some politicians may not be lying to us.

To these people I'd like to ask: "Did you also know that 'gullible' is not in the dictionary?" After all this time, half of us still believe what these assholes say to us, or are at least willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. There's just not enough lumber in the world to make the clue by fours I'd need to beat people with, is there?

(Filed under: bug)

So, Friday night I'm driving with my wife and son through Tempe on my way to the bookstore so my wife can pick up her copy of this vampire/werewolf book everyone seems so gaga over.

I'm driving down McClintock Avenue when the red and blue lights come on behind me. "Hmmm... not speeding, plate is current, didn't do anything wrong". I turn off onto a tertiary street, and after a few minutes the officer comes up to us, asks for the trinity (license/registration/insurance) and informs us that our plate has been flagged for non-compliance with insurance. I did get a letter from the MVD that this would happen, because my policy got rewritten to comply with AZ law when we moved back, and that caused the old policy to be canceled. But I went to the MVD to straighten it out and they said everything was hunky-dory.

I want to stress at this point that the police officer was a complete professional through this, and was respectful, courteous and friendly the whole time. But he did notify me that he is basically forced by law to confiscate the car's license plate. He says "let me run this one more time and we'll see if it's just a computer glitch." He comes back again after a few minutes and says "you're free to go. I should've looked closer. The plate I put in came back to a Hyundai (we have a Ford Windstar), and I typed 225 instead of 255. Sorry for disturbing you."

Mildly annoying, sure, but it's only ten minutes, so no big deal, and he admitted he made a mistake which is way more than I expect from any government authority (Local cops in Tempe and Mesa are professional and decent human beings. I'm much more wary of Arpaio's boys). I started thinking about it more and more. If instead of a simple financial responsibility law infraction, the plate that is so similar to mine was tied to a violent criminal on the lam, or God forbid, some terrorist suspect? Would the simple act of hitting a record in the computer database woken the vast fitfully sleeping machine far beyond what a Tempe, AZ cop intended because of a duffed keyboard entry? I'm glad I didn't have to find out.

I think license plates should have a modulus check digit. :-)

So, about a year ago, I bailed from Slashdot, wiped my journals (so stupid!), dabbled with Multiply, which I despised, so I left there, and basically became a hermit.

All I have to say is I don't think I've coped with life very well these last couple of years. But, things have a way of returning to their base state, and I have been reading /. regularly for a few months now, and sharing my wit(lessness) with the masses. But, I've not been reading journals, and many of the friends I've made here have gone on to Multiply, so I guess I'll be missing them.

Also, my office here at the newspaper has been emptied. And at home the house is all but packed as we await the movers tomorrow to return to our beloved Arizona deserts. I will once again be working in space sciences, and hopefully, I can return to my normal zany insanity instead of the brooding miserable insanity that has possessed me for the last two years.

So, as I return to "my happy place", I'll try to do better to keep in touch. :-)