stlplaceWe went to MUNY last night, Meeting Me in St. Louis is on.
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.
Today is DTV day, the analog TV will be turned off and the local TV stations will broadcast digital signals only. Go to DTV.gov for the government coupon Digital TV converter box and other information.
Local PBS station (KETC) is running short of funds recently, partly due to the recession, corporate underwriting and viewer donations declined quite a bit. Similar situation is facing KWMU, local NPR station. I am both a fan of PBS and NPR, the programs I paid attention to is Nightly Business News (NBR), and MarketPlace at NPR. The reasons I like them is: they are much better than those Mad Money, Fast Money and other programs on CNBC. I used to watch quite a bit Mad Money for entertainment, but unfortunately it influenced my thinking, from time to time. In the past year I still watch them, but with a much critical mind.
Mobile broadband (3G) is getting popular these days, but for most people (esp. consumers) that’s still a bit too expensive. At this time I think the good old Wifi is more suitable for me and many working from home (Starbucks, Panera Bread, Borders, Barnes Noble, or McDonald) type.
I used to use Free Wifi at Panera/St. Louis Bread Co. But “free” usually comes with a price, such as the new policy of “limit to 30 minutes use” between 11 AM to 2 PM. I have used two Wifi plan so far, T-mobile hotspot (Borders) and Boingo (many airports, Starbucks, McDonald). Let me compare those two plans:
Cost: T-mobile $19.99 per month for everyone ($9.99 for T-mobile wireless users, like me); Boingo costs $9.99 per month (US)
Coverage: Boingo wins this one because it is available in most Starbucks, McDonald, and airports. T-mobile hotspot is available in Borders bookstore, and it has a free roaming agreement with Starbucks (using AT&T Wifi), but I got some connection problem in one of my two visits to Starbucks. Of course the downside of Starbucks and McDonald is it’s more noisy than Borders (usually).
BTW, I found the iPhone Wifi Finder to be cool.
Yesterday was series one. The series is about the new stimulus package, economy and comparison of (1930s) new deal with current stimulus package. The first one showed many St. Louis landmark, such as St. Louis zoo, Forest Park (Jewel Box). I did not know many of those were built in 1930s (the New Deal).
StreamVideo link here.
It’s said that President will be here for a Townhall tomorrow (Wednesday), to get some feedback for his first 100 days. Suddenly, St. Louis is under spotlight.
Here is a link to “recent programs” at PBS NewsHour.
I was a bit surprised to see the anti-Ameren (local ulitily company) TV ads (link here), which shows an old person, feeling stressed by the potential 40% rate hike of electricity by Ameren. This thing reminds me of the political Ads during campaign season.
Interestingly enough, Ameren is fighting back with its own Ads.
The promotion ends Monday March 30, for new customer only. $25 will appear in acct shortly after opening. Need to use the Check Card once to get the remaining $50. As I understand US bank does business mostly in Midwest and Northwest. Check out bank branch locations from their web site.
No additional conditions such as direct deposit etc.
Disclosure: I just opened one this morning; I also hold a few shares of US bank stock (NYSE: USB) at this time.
I am thinking going to this event again this year. I went there 2 years ago, and was impressed by what Grand Center has to offer.
I can not think of other big New Year celebration activies here.
The direction to Grand Center is here. Happy New Year !!!
(Update) Felt I am like a car-thief today: had to climb from back seat to front seat, because the front doors were frozen due to snow. Don’t know how the by standers felt?
(Original) It started to snow here in St. Louis, yesterday morning I saw a little bit snow on the car, this morning I found more snow when I got up.
(Full size pic here)
Baidu
The trouble for Baidu appears to be mounting, as lawsuit on the Ads came in. The information on Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) is quite effient actually, compared to most other Chinese ADRs listed in the US. I still remember the hype around its IPO in Summer 2005, one year after Google’s highly successful IPO. As an old Chinese saying goes “higher climb, sharper drop”, or a western saying goes “quick rise, quick fall”. Same philosophy goes to my CROX stock trade last year 🙁
Pilgrim’s Pride
Anhuser Busch became AB Inbev, a well known industrial icon. The new AB Inbev logo looks goofy though. The eagle is fly off the AB Inbev, what does that mean?
The endowment fund of Washing U. lost more than $1 billion this year (from $5.4 billion to $4.1 billion, on the paper), because of the weakness of recent stock market. The university is announcing cut back plans. This reminds me when the stock market was good, people tends to spend more. I guess university is not different from ordinary people.
The automobile industry bailout got stalled in congress. St. Louis already lost Ford plant a few years back. This year she lost the Chrysler (dodge caravan) plant, and significantly cut down capacity of the Chrysler Dodge Ram plant. I can understand why republican senator of Show Me state Kid Bond is working hard on the issue, besides St. Louis region, Kansas City also got big 3 plants (Ford, GM).
Week in review 10/20 to 10/25
Bill Clinton visits Kirkwood
President Bill Clinton visit St. Louis this past Monday (10/20), and we got a peek at the popular former president. I always admired Bill’s speaking skills. He did the job well: he was making the case for Obama. His main talking points are: on key issues like economy, healthcare and international relation, Obama is much better than McCain.
That’s the first time I saw a US president. We did bring the “My Life” book but did not get the signiture.
New job
From tomorrow I will have a new job, a technical consulting job which allows me work from home. Last I checked, the regular unlead gas price is $2.48 at the station near my home. Not much gas money saving from “working from home”.
Cheap gas and economy
Seriously, I think the cheap gas means two things:
1) The US economy is weakening quickly, US consumes 25% of world crude oil, when US reduces demand, the crude oil dropped from $147 to $60s in 3 months;
2) Relief to US consumers, it is reported one cent of gas price decline means $1 billion money saved for consumer. So from $4 a gallon (3 months ago) to $2.50 we already had a $150 billion economy stimulus.
