Author: stlplace

NRG Energy: a better way to play Buffett?

Post author By stlplace
Post date July 12, 2009
No Comments on NRG Energy: a better way to play Buffett?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

When I say “play Buffett” I meant people who follows Buffett investing strategy, more specifically people who buy and hold his company Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A, BRK.B) stock. This is not easy as Buffett’s strategy is not clear cut, and his company stock is mostly overpriced in recent years (because of his fame), not to mention doing homework on Berkshire is almost mission impossible (at least I felt I cannot understand his corner stone business: insurance). So here is a better way:

Buying the stocks Buffett bought

Tags Buffett, Exelon, NRG-Energy

Technology

Two Logitech mouse: V200 and VX nano

Post author By stlplace
Post date July 11, 2009
No Comments on Two Logitech mouse: V200 and VX nano

Reading Time: 2 minutes

My logitech V200 mouse is more than 3 years old. Recently it acts a bit strange, basically the clicking does not work very well: for instance, when I intended clicking once, it will click twice, vice versa. So I was looking for a replacement for some time. I found the VX Nano is a good one.

(Left: the new VX Nano; right: the old V200

Price and Review
Bought both from Amazon.

Tags logitech, mouse, vx-nano, vx200

Saint Louis

MUNY: Meet Me in St. Louis

Reading Time: 2 minutes

We went to MUNY last night, Meeting Me in St. Louis is on.

Meet me in St. Louis pic

It’s 4th season I went to MUNY, I still remember in year 2001/2, I did not even know what MUNY is when a colleague wanted to give away MUNY tickets. Long words short, MUNY is the largest outdoor musical in the US. It’s being shown every summer in the outdoor MUNY theater at beautiful forrest park (history of MUNY). You don’t have to pay to see the show, the last 7 rows of seats are available on “first come, first serve” basis.

Tags forrest-park, meet-me-in-st.-louis, MUNY

Technology

The dark side of the technology

Post author By stlplace
Post date July 9, 2009
1 Comment on The dark side of the technology

Reading Time: < 1 minute

A while ago I wrote about Internet Safety.

Last year
MySpace/Facebook, Barack Obama (this is probably the bright side, if you believe Barack is a good guy)

This year
Twitter revolution, Iran;

SMS (text message) + online BBS, Urumqi incident (what I call a terrorist attack/organized killing against innocent civilians);

Cyber attacks, notice the recent news South Korea and US gov web sites got attacked, not to mention the endless email from Nigeria says I will receive $10 million dollars if I can him my bank acct;

and there is this great thing many people love (but don’t want to admit), this porn thing (see WSJ video about software to help a guy get rid of bad habbit).

Life

Is western media biased?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Well, yes or no. As with many things in life, there are honest (at least try to be honest) western media outlets, such as NPR and PBS; and there are some biased ones, mostly for profit media, such as CNN, and even WSJ which is a business newspaper. Why is that? The simple reason is the media has to please its audience (in the case of CNN, it’s US and western audience), to get viewership and the advertising dollar (which is not an easy thing esp. in this economy).

Tags CNN, NPR

video

Remembering July 5

Reading Time: < 1 minute

(Update July 9) A personal story written by NY Times reporter Edward Wong.

(Original) This is Sept. 11 for China. July 5, Urumqi (Capital city of Xinjiang, China), 9-11 style attack happened to innocent people walking on the street, students/workers on the way to home, shop owners attending their customers,… were beaten and some are even killed by some well organized terrorists. I don’t have all the details yet, but the following video from Youtube offers a glimpse of the situation. Warning: some scene are bloody, exercise caution/judgement when watching.

Tags July-5, Sept-11, Urumqi, Xinjiang

Travel

Visit Chicago: III

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I would like to list some of the Chinese restaurants I visited in this trip (and in the past). I will also list some web sites which I think will be helpful to plan Chicago trip.

Chinese restaurant
Lao Sze Chuan (web site here): this is the first Chinese restaurant I visisted in Chicago (2001?). I waited for more than 30 minutes in a hot summer afternoon. The waiting line is much shorter nowadays because there are more authentic Chinese restaurants. It is located at China town. Some of the food (e.g., rabbit meat) are very spicy in my opinion. Get a map here.

Laoszechuan pic

Tags Chicago, chinese-restaurants, City-Pass, destinations, explorer-pass

Travel

Visit Chicago: II

Reading Time: 3 minutes

We are back from Chicago. Visited the Premium mall (near Aurora) yesterday, and was quite impressed. This was my first trip to the Aurora mall, and I was surprised to see so many premium brands and shoppers (esp. the crowds at Coach store). Judging by the size of crowds in the mall, it seems the economy is doing fine. But yesterday, the unemployed number announced by the gov (470,000) exceeded the expectation again. The market tanked again, although I think it has more to do with the July 4th US holiday, people want to play safe in this long weekend.

PT Cruiser
I rent the car from Enterprise near my home, this is a small rental office to serve the Lou Fuze car dealership. I booked an “intermediate”, and they offered the PT Cruiser to me. This is one small mistake I made, I should have booked “midsize” or “standard”. Usually Enterprise has a free upgrade in airport locations, but not this small office, as matter of fact they have to get the PT Cruiser from another office. Initially I was a little uncomfortable about taking this little car to Chicago, but the PT Cruiser turns out to be very good, except one minor problem: there is no guard/screen for the trunk.

GPS

Tags Chicago, hotel, premium-mall, rental-car

Travel

Visit Chicago: I

Reading Time: 2 minutes

We came to the windy city yesterday, and today we visited quite a few places: Michigan Ave. (magnificent mile), Millennium Park, Art Institute (outside, no inside tour yet), Navy Pier, China Town. All with the 3 day CTA pass and CTA train/bus.

I did not totally forget about stock market yet. This noon when I was in Chicago Culture Center, I hooked up my Nokia 5800 with the Wifi network. Interestingly I saw Exelon (the utility company serves Chicago, also the company is trying to acquire NRG Energy) signs in couple places: the skybridge connects Millennium Park and Art Institute is sponsored by Exelon. Because I own NRG stock, and Exelon is in a proxy fight against current NRG board, I received both letters from NRG and Exelon. Not surprising I voted according to NRG board recommendation, and did nothing on Exelon letter. One thing I noticed is the proposed Exelon board candidate is not really qualified to run utilities companies, they could be the “friends of Exelon” board.

Network
Back to travel, we are staying at La Quinta Inn Schaumburg, most things are ok except this silly network (managed by LodgeNet, a Nasdaq listed company, ticker symbol LNET). One problem I encountered is Google map and Google finance don’t work all the time. It thinks I was doing something fishy and says “in next 10 minutes you will only have 56k speed”. It’s like punish a kid for doing something wrong. Pretty much the much publicized Green Dam project. One thing I am aware of is I am using Mac. But the behavior of network is annoying, to say the least.

GPS

Tags Chicago, trip

Travel

Visited Detroit this week

Post author By stlplace
Post date June 27, 2009
No Comments on Visited Detroit this week

Reading Time: < 1 minute

I was in Detroit last Wed and Thur. When I was leaving the client site, I heard famous actress Fawcett died from cancer. Shortly after I came back, I heard from NPR that Michael Jackson passed away. That was a shocker. I remember watching a lot Michael Jackson’s MTV back in early 1990s, when I just graduated from college, and when the MTV was relatively new to China. I am not a music freek, but I liked the design of MTV and his sound. Not to mention his move.

Anyway, back to Detroit. Interestingly I think the first record company Michael Jackson signed was Motown, which was found in Detroit (Yahoo Answer). I visited Detroit in 1999 and 2000, to do presentation before car companies (big 3) for automobile related research project. It was in early March, and I remember it was very cold. But I had very nice dinners at Fish Bone (downtown?) and another Italian restaurant.

Tags Detroit, DTW