Author: stlplace

Categories
Business uber-and-side-hustle

Selling on eBay

Reading Time: 7 minutes

(Update 04-03-2025) Received a return request for a laptop bag. It appears the user didn’t use it properly. But I issued the refund anyway. That’s one downside of selling on eBay or drive for Uber: that is the customer service or customer satisfaction. My impression is some customers will never be happy.

(Update 02-13-2025) In general, I hate throwing away useful things into the trash/landfill. Yesterday I was able to fix an old Wi-Fi router. For a while I suspected the power adapter is the reason it didn’t work. Because when I plug in the power adapter the router’s light didn’t come up. Yesterday I looked around and found an OEM power adapter whose output meets the broken power adapter, and I tested it out – it works – and I listed it on eBay right away.

(Update 12-01-2024) New Netflix documentary looks at the downsides of overshopping (CBS Mornings)

(My eBay shop “majorxu” page above, 08-19-2023, do you want to guess which item got sold, which didn’t 🙂

(Update 05-29-2024) Some packing and shipping tips: make sure we get a good, also decent sized packaging, otherwise the item may get lost during USPS shipping. I noticed two recent items (one is a buy from China, via eBay), another is a small item shipped from Springfield, MO (education sector, probably want to save on cost, used a very small box). Both got lost in the process for a while – it was put in the “moving through network“, before eventually showing up. USPS informed delivery helps, but we are mostly in a holding pattern in this case.

This also reminds me of a short video I saw recently: it seems the workers in the video was processing or sorting mountains of packages in China: not sure if this is domestic or International shipping. The number of packages are enormous. Also this is how a Temu warehouse looks like (I 1st saw it on Twitter/X, but can no longer see it).

Btw, “search” on X/Twitter is horrendous, I was able to find it via google search. On the result page, I click on the camera icon to go to other sources.

(Update 04-01-24) I sold a few surprising items last few days, things I didn’t expect to sell.

(Update 03-03-2024) I sold one item for the multi-quantity with variations listings below. Also I noticed one minor issue: it seems eBay does not offer the USPS 1st class mail now. So I had to pay extra $2.00 or $3.00 to get their ground advantage service. In order to avoid extra cost on my side, I changed the shipping to the USPS Ground Advantage in my listings. I still have 15 items left. Those are free items for me (10+ years ago, Courtney of Subaru America), so overall I am still okay as long as I don’t lose money over shipping and eBay fees 🙂

The reason I want to buy shipping from eBay is it has better integration with eBay payment and so on. I am willing to pay a bit extra to get this. Somewhat like what I do with Turbo Tax (better integration with IRS and the state tax authority, here in the show me state, it’s the depart of revenue).

Fixed price (buy it now) vs Auction: I gave it some more thought. One of the fairly common thing happened to me at least, is with an auction starting price of 99 cents, plus shipping. Some buyers don’t pay after bidding for it. This is usually not the case for the “buy it now” buyers. I assume the latter group is more committed buyer: they will need pay for the item when they bought it via “buy it now”. So in the future I will explore this format instead of my earlier experiment which is mostly auction.

(Update 03-02-2024) Today I created my 1st multiple quantities listing with variations on eBay – Genuine Subaru Badge of Ownership you pick Medallions many Discontinued – NEW. I also explained how to make sure the “variations” show up during listing process in the Twitter thread below.

(Update 02-26-2024) It seems eBay doesn’t like I listing Helmet there, it automatically cancelled the listing a few hours before the bid closes. Below is the email I received from eBay.

email from eBay

I just deleted the “Crutches” listing there too – as earlier I got a similar message from FB Marketplace. I still leave my crutches listing at local CraigsList. Below is the FB Market place rule regarding medical device etc.

FB Marketplace rule re: medical and healthcare products

(Update 02-19-2024) For eBay, when selling old and sometimes not so appealing items, the “unsold” rate could be quite high, one has to have a thick skin, as well as lots of patience and a big heart to continue.
On 02-18-2024
Unsold 132 –
Sold 10 – (2 unpaid; 8 paid and shipped)
Active 25 – (the main concern is not to have a distress kind of feeling)

Last but not least, it seems we lost the money made ($6 or so) from the above shoes in another pair of shoes my 13 year old bought and tried to make some money on eBay. In Chinese we say that as “偷鸡不成蚀把米” 🙂

Back to declutter, I think there are a few other ways to give away things, rather than throw them away, again one man’s trash could be another man’s treasure. They include, local buy nothing sell nothing FB groups, and charities such as Helping Hand Me Downs. The latter direct items to the families in need.

(Update 02-04-2024) Recently I realized I can sell item at 99 cents, plus the USPS Ground Advantage shipping (buyer pay), and I can make about 99 cents from the sale. The buyer’s payment for shipment covers the shipping cost plus the eBay seller fee (transaction fee). One of such items is – 4-Pack Repair Parts to fix Crocs Shoes Rivet Strap Replacement Button Fastener Do you want to guess where I got this item, or how I got started selling those? Hint: I am selling the surplus items I bought from Amazon or other places. Again: reuse, reduce and recycle.

(Original 08-09-2023) This would be my 18th year since I started to sell on eBay in the year 2005. I recall the year because that’s the year one of my nieces was born, and I visited her when she was a newborn in the southwest USA. It’s one of the few times I got to hold a newborn baby. At that time I was single and I didn’t have much chance to hold a baby. Later on, I had more chances to hold babies because my wife and I have 2 girls. I recall in late 2014, I put my baby girl (our 2nd) on my left shoulder, while I typed on my computer (laptop) working. Those are some of the highlights of my life for sure.

Back to selling on eBay topic. I understand nowadays some people would say eBay is slowly dying (here is an article I recently came across). But back in the day, 20 years ago, I recall Dick Cheney (the W’s VP), touted that “Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay.” Note he gave that remark in the presidential re-election season of 2004: the economy then was not very good including the employment, note in year 2003 the US invade Iraq. I think eBay’s position then is like today’s Etsy, Uber / Lyft, and Doordash combined in terms of the number of freelance jobs being created. I know we call it gig economy now, a much fancier word.

Recently I came across James Sinclair’s YouTube video and he probably mentioned that “selling on eBay” is a hard business. I tend to agree.

Back in the days

I recall in those early days, I would buy and sell, monitors, digital camcorders, digital cameras, etc from websites such as dell.com, and using some discount codes. Then sell them on eBay. I sold quite a few. Again if you look at my eBay profile, I sold 215 items in all time. I believe most of the sales were done between the years between 2005 and 2007. I don’t think I made a meaningful profit from those (this again sorta confirms Jame’s assertion above). Once I had a complaint filed against me because the item got lost from the US to either Afghanistan or Iraq, which I have zero control. Note the USPS insurance also only covers shipping inside the US. I know this sucks but this is just life, and I think that’s probably another reason I decided to not continue selling on eBay, in addition to low or no profit, as well as in the next few years, iPhone and other smartphones got more popular and gradually replaced many camcorders and digital cameras (24 things that the mobile phone has replaced). I still remember the excitement I had when I got my 1st blackberry, and back in 2009 my coworker really hoped for the iPhone (note it was the early days of iPhone, and it was not available as the company device yet, but it was coming soon).

Different purpose: declutter

But nowadays, my main goal is to sell unused stuff, from a “reduce, reuse, recycle” point of view (refer to the picture at the way bottom to say the point). One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. That’s also why I don’t care much about profitability etc. of all this. It’s not my main goal. I know from time to time I really need to be more organized and reduce the things I keep at home. Until recently I watch Holy Schmidt’s video on the topic, I was not serious enough though. That day I got a bit unhappy about my own mess or the not-well-organization of my desk. So I decided to do a little cleanup. During that, I found out that I forgot to open the mail and quite a few checks from the dental insurance company. Some checks are over one year old and I can no longer deposit them 🙁

Schmidt’s example in his video is more extreme, per se. But I can see I am coming down this path if I don’t clean up the garage, the basement, and other rooms at home quickly. So there is my incentive. I don’t think it’s realistic to sell everything on eBay. I would probably give some large items away, or throw some away eventually.

Last but not least, something left an impression, is this YouTube TedX video, To be different is good, by Jon Jandai. I think I have a lot to chew on about the video in terms of living a simple life.

Categories
Edu-and-Ladue-School Fun Life

Suzuki violin lesson

Reading Time: 6 minutes

(Picture above Hilary Hahn, who plays the violin for Suzuki book 1; the piano was played by Natalie Chen)

(Update 12-14-2023) I realized my daughter’s violin teacher also knows how best to keep the kids engaged and interested. Couple things: 1) The practice sheet, he has a worksheet which looks like a printed out Excel spreadsheet and kids feel accomplishment after completing each task. He also plans to do a pizza party for the “most continuously practice” for celebrations. 2) Along similar lines, I saw during group class, yesterday it was probably holiday themed, he gave out candies for small quiz or games, or challenges.

(Original) My younger one started the Suzuki violin lesson recently. I heard about the Suzuki violin lesson a long time ago (more than 10 years ago), when my older one was little. But we didn’t pick violin lessons for her. Like many Chinese parents, we picked piano lessons. We started piano lessons for our younger one a few years ago as well, and kept it through the pandemic (for the most part, the main exception is the shutdown period between March 2020 and May 2020).

Choose the Right Teacher

I picked the violin teacher after doing some research. Mainly following friends and my own gut feeling. Now looking back I feel I am a bit lucky: I think this Suzuki method is probably the way to go here. Note this is the 1st Suzuki violin book – Suzuki Violin School, Vol 1: Violin Part. The book no longer has an attached CD, I believe. So I went to the Apple iTunes store to get the music and searching “Suzuki violin book 1” seems to bring me the wrong music for the book. It brings up Takako Nishizaki’s Suzuki Evergreens and you bet I bought it. It took me to a while to find out the one album matching the book (again it should look something like the photo at the top).

Our younger daughter recently passed the twinkle test. It’s the first level of the test, I would not discount it though. The teacher said the average time to pass it is a bit over one year (I should add the average kid’s age to start violin lesson is probably much younger than our 9 year old too). The start age for kids to learn something is interesting. I think in general, it gets easier for a kid to learn something when he/she gets older, another good example is swimming. But at the same time, if we start something on a kid too late, most likely he/she will do okay but not able to complete in today’s competitive world – that’s the dilemma. I know some kids who have potential to play soccer in college or in the national team down the road, and they worked real hard from a very young age, and the parents are shuttling them to practice/games like a full time job. Similar for mind sports such as Chess. So in other words, we should not just looked at how well a kid did on something, we also should look at how many miles the parent put on her car, or his frequent flyer miles 🙂

Back to the topic: the violin lesson. As I was the parent who drove her to class, as well as help her practice in the early days. I do the bow for her as she was not ready to use the bow yet (the teacher doesn’t want her to build bad habit). She is on her 2nd and 3rd song now. The music (violin) thing seems hard to me for two reasons:

  1. The master of the music, reading notes etc.
  2. The coordination and movement of two hands, in the case of violin, one hand (fingers) need to move and push down the strings, while the other one does the bow. The “bow” part is actually hard, as it was not natural, as I saw from one YouTube video a while ago. Took a while for Sophia to get familiar to it.

To overcome this, I think her violin teacher did a few things right.

  1. He has a spreadsheet-like worksheet for the kid, this way the kid could mark every day’s practice. Talking about the organization.
  2. Rigors with a sense of humor. I think most American-born kids or parents in America can sympathize, maybe I can extrapolate it to the world too, basically, nobody would like to be criticized. In the piano teachers/kids community, I heard horrendous stories such as the teacher would scold the parents if the kids didn’t do the work or practice.
  3. Group lessons and encouragement to the kids to participate in an ensemble (namely, the SE and higher at CMS at Webster U). We just started the group lesson. I think this will be quite helpful as kids like to learn in a social environment too.
  4. Use of computer and modern tech. I think the teacher is probably about 70 years old. He was previously a music teacher at Kirkwood and a violin teacher at CMS (Webster U). He does email communication, word doc, Zoom etc. very well – which is probably standout among his peers. He also encourages me to take video on iPhone for Sophia to learn at home, for music and posture, and hand (finger) gesture.

Violin Kids

In our school district the kids have the options to learn violin at 4th grade. I understand some other school districts offer that too. Our main motivation for Sophia is to have some confidence when the violin lesson starts this school year, and she may have a bit “1st mover advantage”. I know at least one other kid at her grade does violin too (already). Again this is mostly help our younger daughter to find her niche (or calling), something she can feel good about (after doing some work). We have absolutely no expectation for her to play professionally down the road. We respect all the professional musicians. But we know that’s not easy and it’s not for everyone. In fact, the step daughter of Sophia’s teacher is a pro, and she plays for SLSO. The teacher said she played 4 hours a day when she was young, and we saw her video when she was 8 and she looked already like a pro (being 8 years old).

Learning music in general (kids version)

We started piano lesson for our older daughter when she was in kindergarten (she was 5 and a half). She had a pretty rigorous teacher to start. After a while, things became harder for her and she kinda slacked off. And we also stepped back too as we don’t want to be berated by the teacher when our daughter didn’t do her work. Later we switch her to an easier piano teacher. She did other things such as SLCCSing (St. Louis Children’s Choirs), from 1st grade until 7th. This coming year we planned to have her take a break on choir. She started percussion 2 years ago when she was in the 6th grade (middle school), and we will continue her on that. She seems like music in general, as a hobby and a relaxation tool. She sings and occasionally plays ukuleles at home, and sometimes plays piano too now that she doesn’t have piano lessons (more or more willingly compared to the days she has the piano lessons). She doesn’t have plan to major in music so far, but may consider it as a minor in college. She is not talented in piano as some other Chinese kids. She only won one medal from piano (the sonatina thing when she was 6 or 7, at the Lindenwood U).

For our younger daughter we were more laid back, also due to the pandemic, we started her on piano with the “nicer” teacher. And she did the chorus at her school in last school year. And in this April we started her on violin. We hope she can continue this path (a bit like her big sister does percussion for now).

Again like many parents here, we like our kids to learn music (reading notes etc.) as well as mastering one instrument. I understand for percussion, this is a bit hard to identify a particular instrument, marimba is a common one, but drums are also common.

Also, last but not least, a while ago I heard playing piano (maybe easier to start than violin for older people), could have potential benefit of prevent dementia, so that’s something I need to get more serious about.

PS: again please note I am not doing any victory lap here. I am just sharing what I know (and don’t know). And I welcome any feedback, comments or questions.

Categories
Software development Technology

AI AI AI

Reading Time: 2 minutes
Screenshot from Chatgpt

Background

Years ago when I think of AI, I only think about the autonomous driving (driverless car or self driving car). The tech behind it is so called “deep learning“, and it’s a part of Artificial Intelligence. Now it’s all the Chatgpt and Generative AI, or in Chinese tech community, AIGC (AIG generated content) is on the rage.

Is it AI or just computer vs human? I recall I could not beat the computer on chess.com (I believe it’ just the computer algorithm behind it, there is no machine learning behind the scene) easily. Note I am not a very good chess player. But I recall Google has this AlphaZero and it beats chess world-champion. The latter probably has some artificial intelligence and some machine learning capability.

Apple’s approach

(CNBC) Apple’s practical approach to A.I.: No bragging, just features

Personally I like Apple’s way of roll out AI as time goes approach. For Apple: over the years I noticed iPhone in particular would guess where I want to go, I think it probably looked at my calendar and the usage of map app. Also I like the “featured photo” and “memories” feature on the iPhone photos app very much. The other day I saw the feature photo on my iPhone was my old daughter 1st school day picture. I know Facebook and Google photos can probably do that too. But for Facebook I think I would need to upload the photo that day. Not sure about Google, because I used Android at most for 1 year or 2, among my last 13 years use of smartphone.

Apple rarely rolls out things or features when they are not ready. I recall the rumor (a while ago especially) there was talk of Apple Car. But till today there is no Apple Car been seen in the real world, which is quite different from Tesla, Alphabet (Google) Waymo and Cruise (GM).

Impact on other people’s livelihood

The main worry in addition to invasion or erosion of privacy, is the AI could potentially take over people’s jobs. One area is in the creative arena, artists, writers etc. Below is a real story.

An artist explains why Marvel’s use of AI to animate a sequence is worrying : NPR

Also ethic issues such as faking (pretend as) other people, and we saw some of that as well: It takes a few dollars and 8 minutes to create a deepfake. And that’s only the start

I related question I have: how many of the Twitter Chinese porn video are made by AI, those #pigButcher style of videos. Also this one made by AI

Again, Google, Microsoft, and Meta can’t stop talking about A.I. — here’s why Apple rarely mentions it.

Tech leaders mention AI almost 170 times during earnings calls: report (you can do a google search on it if you are curious, I am not lying).

Categories
Life Life Tips

What’s new at Costco recently?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

(Update 11-28-2024) My wish list

Island Way Sorbet (actually my younger one probably found this online, not sure if it’s YT shorts or somewhere else). Now I have to wait patiently for this in Spring /Summer season.

KOOSHY CROUTONS (I only bought it once, and my older daughter asked can we get it again)

KUNIN RIGATO MIX PREMIUM ASIAN RICE CRACKERS : I bought it a few times, but could not find it now.

(Original) I found this one Costco potato corn dog (Eat With Emily post; The Daily Meal post) at my my local Costco (U city), after seeing it from a friend. I made a small mistake when cooking it at 1st try, I put it along side with the Hamburger on the outdoor gas stove (for BBQ), which kinda burned it. Later I tried microwave, which works better. I think we probably only need 1.5 mins to 3 mins via microwave oven. Note the inside is cheese, or to be more specific, the mozzarella Cheese.

Another one is the cheese crips. I think at the local store it’s about $9 a pack. Not as expensive as shown in the online store. I found it at other grocery store too, but it’s more expensive than Costco.

Last but not least, Costco Shoyu Ramen with chicken – Frozen Ramen Bowls. It looks like 5 out of 6 bowls are gone since I bought them yesterday 🙂 One thing is we used regular microwave friendly bowls for warming / heating it up. I joked with my wife it probably would cost $7 or $8 in a restaurant.

PS: I noticed in last 6 months or so, Costco likes to move its merchandize around, mostly to create a “treasure hunt” feeling for the shoppers 🙂 This is applicable to some of the hot or seasonal items too.

Categories
Life Tips

Not all fast food places are equal

Reading Time: 4 minutes

On this past Sunday evening, I learned a harsh lesson on the fast food and order food via mobile apps. It’s not the 1st time I waited a loooooooong time for the food. During pandemic I recalled once I waited probably one hour at the Panda Express not far from where I live, when I was using the Uber Eats app. I learned lesson and didn’t go back there for a loooooooong time. After the embargo period, I only go there via drive through, or sometimes when their door is open, I will go inside and order food.

I also often go to Chick-fil-A (CFA), Culver’s and Panera (St. Louis Bread Co., or just Bread Co here). I never had issues at all 3. All are fairly friendly places. Using mobile apps ordering food is quite ubiquitous nowadays. This may be get more popular during pandemic and this change seems kept intact post pandemic – the other day I saw a bunch of people wait for food (online order) at Noodles Co, and I recall before pandemic during dinner time, there were usually quite a few diners eating there. Personally I use the restaurants app / website such as CFA, Corner 17, Five Guys, McDonald’s, Noodles Co, Panera, Pot Belly’s, Pickle-man, Raising Cane’s, Shake Shack, Taco Bell, Taike, etc., and sometimes the food delivery app / website (I mainly do pickup though) such as Chowbus (Asian ethnic foods) (Grub-hub (Seamless) and Uber Eats. In very few cases I would run into issues. And I don’t really care much if the restaurants miss one or two items: I think mostly are honest mistakes and we all make mistakes as we are humans.

But on last Sunday the fast food place Popeyes gave me a lesson on this again: not all fast food places are equal. We ordered food from the mobile app (first time I used their app). And we planned to dine in the restaurant. I waited quite patiently. After a few customers and probably 20 to 30 minutes, the staff told me they don’t have couple items, and asked me to do something inside the app. I don’t see an option to update the order in the app. And because the kids already waited for a while, I asked them if they can give the items they have or give replacement (in my impression giving replacement is a quite common practice in some restaurants). They would not do any of those. I did the reporting in the app and we went to the nearby McDonalds’s in stead. I setup an email alert for the post of the charge, and couple days later I started dispute once I received the email message. Did the email again to the merchant customer service department also. || Update (07-26-2023 pm) It looks like after I replay back to the Zendesk (they use Zendesk for customer service) email yesterday, the merchant did refund.

Later on I did a bit more google search, and it seems this (customer service issue) is a quite well know issue at the mentioned chain restaurant: google review, trip advisor, delish and reddit. So I would stay away from them for now.

Customer Service is a tough job in general. As my 13 year old told me from time to time, (probably from her own observations), human beings are messy, and she doesn’t want to be a people manager when she grows up. Me neither. My customer service experience is limited, but once I did spent 2 hours (maybe more) to fix an issue when I was working for the credit card company (loyalty and rewards program), and basically I was trying to issue about 13 cents (yes $0.13) worth of points to a bank customer, because that customer (an old gentleman) would call the customer service line every day to complain about the issue.

I do understand in the case of many fast food restaurants, they are short staffed, and sometimes customers are not that reasonable (I don’t believe customers are always right, btw). But on the other hand, many fast food restaurants don’t provide something (food or drink) that’s only available at their shop, and customers always have a choices. I think this can be expanded to things such as banks, internet services and grocery stores, etc. too.

Something came to my mind (modified from a fairly well known saying): one may never remember what food they eat, but they will always remember how they are being treated at the restaurant (or some other establishment). Another example is in the old days, I recall there were beggars who asked for food at my village, and we wouldn’t or should not say anything like: 嗟来食. And recently I heard sometimes the police would be crazy at the homeless person who ate at restaurant too. Last but not least, a topic on homeless customer (too big a topic and I would not expand it here).

PS: I recall many years ago when I was in the graduate school, one of the fellow graduate students an American friend told me in general Americans can wait about 5 minutes for the food at McDonald’s (he meant people could use more patience, which I agree). I think I probably can wait for 15 to 20 minutes at a fast food / fast casual place nowadays. || Also, yesterday I noticed the CFA is coming to Creve Coeur, they will take over the place at the former TGIF place at Tempo Drive and Olive Road. There will be another CFA place next to the U City Costco too.

PS 2: I came across this one, which is a bit extreme. Again really there is no need to fight over something like this. I think the best way is to go to another place, e.g., McDonald’s, Chick fil A, Raising Cane’s, or Culver’s, in this case 🙂

Categories
401k and Personal Finance Investing

Microsoft Actvision Blizzard acquisition

Reading Time: < 1 minute

This is probably my only successful merge arbitrage speculation so far. By “success” I meant I am out after the recent US FTC failed attempt to stop the merge. Note the UK authority could still pose challenges or stop this thing completely. Although the market does expect the deal to close eventually.

I didn’t speculate on those frequently. I do recall I did a few such as the CNOOC / Chevon bidding war on a company, as well as the InBev buying Budweiser. For this one Activision I started buying after the 2022 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting. And I did trade the stock here and there during the process. The main thing I am happy about is not how much money I made (about $1,000 I think, I didn’t bet heavily on it, btw), but I was able to hold my position towards the end (I mean almost the end, close to the $95 closing price).

I hope to get into similar games in the future.

Categories
401k and Personal Finance

Dividend based investing

Reading Time: 5 minutes
Stock chart for AT&T ends on 07/14/2023 – this actually the low point of stock for a while as you can see the new chart here

(Update 12-19-2024) I gave it more thought here at my Substack.

(Update 12-31-2023) I just looked at one of my IRA accounts in which I hold mostly stocks. The dividend yield is about 1% (I hold about 45% of the portfolio in $BRK). There are two points of the views on dividend based investing, some people argue we don’t always need the dividend. In the example of $BRK, basically we can trust the management, and we just need to sell the stocks to get the “dividend” for our spending need. Below is a YT video that explains this.

(Update 12-15-2023) Costco is issuing a special dividend of $15 per share, and this spurs some interest on some investors. Quote Motley Fool: “This will be Costco’s fifth-ever special dividend. Previous special dividends were paid in 2012, 2015, 2017, and 2020 in the amounts of $7, $5, $7, and $10, respectively. This makes the company’s 2024 special dividend of $15 its largest, by far.” I only have a few shares of $COST, btw. Below is a bigger $COST shareholder.

https://twitter.com/joecarlsonshow/status/1735684794426724420

But I have more $KO, and I believe today 12-15-2023 is also the day Coca Cola pays out quarterly dividend: it’s 46 cents a share. Note $BRK has much more dividend income from $KO.

https://twitter.com/DividendGrowth/status/1735634033449500710

Somewhat unexpected, I noticed the Polaris paid quarterly dividend too: 65 cent a share. I only have a few shares too.

Other dividend stocks I have: $DVN and $PFE. Both declined significantly this year. I bought $DVN in the hope of getting the dividend yield, and it seems with the oil price slipping (in the near future), this didn’t work out for me yet. You may also notice $DVN’s dividend dropped compared to last year.

In the case of $PFE, the situation is much more dire: as shown in this Yahoo Finance Video.

Last but not least, Steve Baller, the former CEO of Microsoft, is getting lots of money from $MSFT dividend.

https://twitter.com/DividendGrowth/status/1735327536631235050

Weekend thoughts 07-22-2023

I have invested or to be more precise speculated in the US stock market since 2003, and this will mark the 20 year anniversary. In recent years, I gave more thoughts to the dividend, both because the dividends are becoming more meaningful, as well as I am thinking about potentially switch from a 9 to 5 job to multiple income streams, e.g., dividends, adjunct teaching at college, ads income from this blog (this seems to be hardest so far, btw :-), etc.

A few things to keep in mind when doing dividend-based or focused investing.

  1. Make sure the company can afford or pay the dividend from its Free Cash Flow (FCF). If something is too good to be true, it’s likely not true. Case in point, if you look at AT&T stock now (07-21-2023), the dividend yield is 7.5%. The problem with AT&T and some other companies (e.g., $SCS, Steelcase the office furniture maker came to mind) is with the debt and deteriorating business or economy, they may not be able to pay the dividend continuously. I know one company that cut dividends recently: VF Corp ($VFC). More on AT&T, I had a tweet on its return in the last 29 years: I think I still need to calculate it myself. Not sure if the chart below includes all the cash dividends and the stock dividend (“Additionally, shareholders of AT&T received 0.241917 shares of WBD for each share of AT&T common stock they held at close”) $T #dividend.
  2. I just noticed this Tweet (thread): S&P Dividend Aristocrats (Wikipedia; 5 year performance comparison with S&P 500, google finance, it seems they did NOT include the dividends in the calculation). I have $KO (#CocaCola) on this list. But Number 2 on the list Leggett & Platt, Incorporated (LEG) looked interesting to me. I just realized it’s based in Missouri (wiki), in fact, the town Carthage, Missouri is close to Joplin, MO, and it has two interstates passing the town: I-44 and I-49. Note their products are also interesting (e.g., this geosynthetic solution and their specialty products, as well as their history. They seem making components for office furniture too – reminds me of Steelcase and my recent purchase of an office chair. The family appears to no longer controls the company. Their current annual dividend is $1.84 (rate is %6.26 per Friday 7-21-2023 closing price of $29.38). I think I will do a deep dive into the company next. Btw, recently I realized this is a hard time for new graduates to get into the IT/software development field, I just noticed there is one position for this company (IT support, I know it’s not ideal, but still something to think about as an entry-level job).
  3. I think I probably say a word about why invested in “stocks that issue cash dividend”. Besides the benefits of cash, a company that issues dividends regularly in some way shows two things: 1) Financial strength (again show me the free cash flow); 2) They care about the shareholder, in some cases the owners probably have a lot of shares too and they actually rely on the dividend for their lives. On the other hand, this does not mean the companies that doesn’t issue dividend are not good, in fact, Berkshire Hathaway the company famous investor Warren Buffett doesn’t issue regular dividend. I recall he said once they did issue 10 cents (source: “Other than a ten cent per share dividend that Berkshire paid in 1967, the company has never paid a dividend to shareholders since Warren Buffett took control in 1965.“) dividend, which looking back it was an expensive mistake. The reason being they invested in the money (say $1) instead of give it to shareholders right away, they get way more than $1 down the road.

PS: Leggett & Platt reminds me of another Missouri based company (Monett, Missouri), ironically it’s a banking ( technology company named Jack Henry & Associates (JKHY). They provide technology and service for financial services industry, with a focus on smaller banks or credit unions. It has an excellent return if we look from its IPO. It has a small dividend, and is in the S&P 500 index. Maybe someday I will drive around those two towns, and see if I can find special sauces that made them successful. Note the greater St. Lotus area has some S&P and Fortune 500 companies too: such as Emerson Electric (EMR) on this list (tweet). Btw, the all time return of JKHY (+47,569.44%, from 1985) is much better than EMR (+1,717.33%, from 1983). Not sure if Google finance has the complete set of historical data. Btw, Leggett & Platt (LEG) Inc performed similar to EMR in this period. I probably looked at JKHY about 15 years ago, not definitely not as serious as Warren Buffett. Warren probably reads the annual report for the company he is interested (plus the reports for 8 competitors).

Market sentiment week of 07-17

It can be better summarized by the unusual_whales tweet on the $ABNB share sales of its cofounder. While I am not saying the insiders always time the market, but it still reminds me of this: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sells more than $285 million in Microsoft stock. I recall about 6 month later (April 2022), $MSFT and Nasdaq had a peak / climax. Again I am not predicting the same this time around 🙂

https://twitter.com/stlplace/status/1682827956371030018
Categories
Saint Louis

Jefferson City Visit

Reading Time: 4 minutes

This is probably my 3rd or 4th visit to the Jeff City (I recall one of my American friends used to call it Jeff City). I had to admit I forgot most of it as my last visit was probably more than 20 years ago. I recall in the Thanksgivings of 1997 and 1998, I visited the Governor’s Mansion because my American host family (Bob and Sue’s family) are the family friends of Governor Mel Carnahan. They are all Rolla native. I can explain their family relationship if you are interested. Please note host family is not where I stayed when I was in Rolla, but I interacted with them quite a bit and they helped me quite a bit in terms of learning / practicing English, as well as learn American culture and heritage.

Sophia our 9 year old decided she wanted to visit a place that’s about 2 hours drive, as recently saw a name for it “trip with one tank of gas” (don’t know how to measure it with EVs 🙂 And she picked the Jeff city. Probably because she likes the name. And I booked hotel which is the Hampton Inn near Capital Mall.

The day before the trip, my girls especially my 13 year old asked “dad, did you plan for the trip”? No I didn’t. So I did google and found Missouri State Penitentiary (tour booking website) on the top of the TripAdvisor list. So we kind agreed we will visit it on the second day (a Sunday). For Saturday we plan to drive there and stroll around the state capitol.

Half the fun is on the road, as the old saying goes. We took the highway 70 west from Wentzville, and took exit 148, drove highway 54 to the Jeff city. On highway 54 we passed Fulton, the Westminster College there is the location where Winston Churchill (the former prime minister of Great Britain) delivered the famous Iron Curtain speech. I understand that’s what Westminster / Fulton are famous for (for me). But I am fairly certain they have much more to offer. Below is from Westminster College website (if you scroll down a bit, you will see):

When you hear about Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri – you may also hear about Sir Winston Churchill, and for good reason. On March 5, 1946, Sir Winston Churchill visited Westminster College as the Green Lecturer and delivered “Sinews of Peace,” a message heard round the world that went down in history as the “Iron Curtain Speech.”

It was a quite hot afternoon, the capitol was closed to visitors. We went back Sunday morning to get a better view of the front side of Capitol, including the Missouri river.

I was surprised to find the sculpture of Monroe etc, which was about the Louisiana Purchase. I had to admit I didn’t brush up my Missouri history before the trip. Some of the other sculptures and memorials are also pretty good / impressive. The girls liked the Lewis and Clark monuments especially the dog.

For food, we had the Fuji Japanese restaurant, and Aunt Annies at the Capital Mall, also the Central Diary ice cream (this is the place to visit for the cancelled 4th graders field trip in 2020, when my 13 year old was a 4th grader). I am glad we finally made it after 3+ years 🙂

But we have a bonus this time, that is the Missouri State Penitentiary (Wikipedia). We picked the most popular 2 hour history tour. And I am a history junkie to be honest. The tour beat my expectation and there was one small scare moment: we toured the dungeon cell which is for the punishment of convicts (offenders => residents). It was totally dark for a few minutes. The tour guide Kathy was quite knowledgeable on the history and the penitentiary as she previously worked in the system, so was James the tour assistant. We toured the gas chamber at the last.

I understand it’s a bit ironic the most popular tourist destination is the penitentiary. But the capital mall is not bad either, with the stores and other entertainments, such as the little animals ride-ons (electric chargeable). Sophia liked it and the owner / operator is from China and she even offered free ride to her after she rode once. We were ready to leave though – we took a slightly different way back, as I saw some bad traffic / accidents on highway 70 (I-70), and decided to take highway 50 / I-44 instead. I had a little fun driving the more rural highway 50, a large portion of which is two lanes highway. But I survived with only 3 cars passing me 🙂

Categories
Software development

“Kick the can down the road” driven development

Reading Time: 2 minutes

This is something I felt we were doing sometimes in the agile software development. It goes like this, we analyze a problem, and we come up with some sort of solution / architecture / design. But during implementation we realized we missed something, especially on the consideration of things like performance. We know we cannot work on the stories forever, so what do we do? We create a new “performance” story and put it in the backlog, meanwhile pushing the existing story forward. This is okay for one time but not every time, in my opinion.

Also, recall a code section in which sometimes people tend to overlook.

Those are scenarios are different

if(condition 1) { // do something 1

if(condition 2) { // do something 2

}

}

vs

if(if(condition 1) {) { // do something 1

}

if(if(condition 2) {) { // do something 2

}

PS: came across this tweet – “coding is 95% copying and pasting”. I think the author may said it in a joking tone. For me seriously I am guilty of this quite a bit in my career. Once I cloned (copied) the javascript code (framework) for a tree structure, and later I started to regret it. One reason I copied was I didn’t know how to properly use an Object Oriented approach there. Also during re-rewrite projects (hope you don’t have to work on those), sometimes there are quite a bit copy/paste as well. I understand sometimes there are valid reasons, e..g., if we just do a “life and shift” without intension to change any business logic. In practice though, there are usually room for improvement during rewrite.

Also, once a business analyst shot me an email shortly after I asked doing a DB update for a month end job. And that person quickly realized the reason for that update and retracted the email or the question. It still shows the sign of a not well organized place though. Believe me that’s not the most disorganized place I worked so far 🙂

Categories
Life Tips Saint Louis

Applying for passport in 2023

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Both my daughters’ passports expired. They are kids and it looks like they will have to get new ones. My wife was thinking we just go to to the USPS office on Saturday (which is how we do in the good old days), and I promptly stopped her. Because from my own experience, a lot of things changed since pandemic. So I went to the USPS website for passport application including renewal.

One thing to keep in mind for the kids passport app: “Both parents/guardians must authorize the issuance of a child’s passport. The best way to give consent is for both parents/guardians to go with the child when applying.” I think I can understand the intention behind this: both parents being present. That is to prevent any dispute of child custody and to prevent one parent takes child away from another. In practice though, this may put more burden on any hourly working parent. Because they may have to leave work (unpaid) to get the passport application in. So there is that.

Also make sure both parents have valid IDs. The cost is $100 for the state department, and $50 for the post office. Since we applied for 2 kids, so the total is about $300. The state department portion has to be cash, debit (there is a small fee) or check (no fees for check), it cannot be credit card. So make sure bring a checkbook as needed. Btw, the clerk at USPS office is very friendly. She took my older daughter’s picture for a few times to make sure it’s good.

Btw, noticed the California Pizza Kitchen in Creve Coeur only offered takeout yesterday evening. We took our friends to the Bristol’s instead. A few days ago I noticed the Noodles and Co. has a lot of takeout customers too, I think mostly probably offered via web or mobile app. Very few people ate inside the restaurant.

PS: Covid pandemic definitely changed things around. I recall renewing the license plate online during the pandemic: “I saw long lines at the license office at Olivette yesterday too. I also just did a first-time online license plate renewal 2 days ago. It’s not the sharpest website but it works. I think we should try new things, especially considering the pandemic. (not everyone can renew online)”