After writing my last entry about market timing I decided to abandon it on 3 of my 4 mutual funds and just apply it to Fidelity Over the Counter (FOCPX). That was my intention originally but then I started doing it on the others. Naturally as soon as I gave up it started working.
Jump the Shark
I was writing a blog entry today about The Flintstones and needed to do some fact-checking and found a web site about TV shows called Jump the Shark. The purpose of the site is to let people share their opinion on when a TV show peaked (or really hit bottom). The title is based on when Fonzi jumped the sharks on Happy Days (wearing his leather jacket). Some people say shows never jumped the shark, but opinions differ. One funny aspect is that brand new shows quickly get entries. It’s always good to the be so cool that you realize a show is tired before anyone else so people start off pretty early.
One funny observation on Gilligan’s Island (which was only on for 3 years) was that the professor should have confessed that he could have gotten them off the island on the first day but a geek like him would never have had a chance with women like Ginger and Mary Ann back on the mainland.
Anyway, it’s funny to read people remembering the shows although some of it is not for kids.
Flintstones U
On one episode of The Flintstones Fred changes places with a millionaire who wants a taste of the normal life. Fred says he couldn’t possibly run a corporation but J. L. Gotrocks says it’s easy: You just go to the meeting and when they bring something up you say “Whose baby is that?” then “What’s your angle?” then “I’ll buy that.”
Kangaroos
One of the Georgia’s little known attractions is the Kangaroo Conservation Center near Dawsonville. They have about 200 kangaroos there. The primary purpose of the place is breeding kangaroos to supply zoos, but they run a decent tourist business as well. A tour is about 2 hours. Part of that time is inside and where they introduce you to the different kinds of kangaroos and wallabies they have. They just let them run around an enclosed area with you, but they typically don’t come real close. They are very gentle animals and look a lot like deer when they’re not hopping around.
They also showed off a kookaburra and a very tiny antelope called a dik-dik. Dik-diks are territorial and mark their territory by rubbing a gland under their eye on anything that sticks out like a limb. They told us to stick out our fingers and some of the dik-diks marked people’s fingers with a tarry little blotch (one marked Susan’s finger, but not mine). Here’s a picture I took later of a dik-dik being curious through the pen fence. Their noses are very flexible and they can bend them around easily. They are very, very cute and about the size of small dog.
Super Geeky iPod Stuff
One problem with the iPod is that it doesn’t store mp3 files by name anywhere. All the mp3’s are stored in hidden directories by numbers. So I was at work and wanted a way I could move songs onto my hard drive there and listen to them. I found a neat piece of open source freeware called SharePod that lets you do just this as well as export playlists or just play songs from your computer that are on your iPod. It does this by running a program that you store on the iPod itself so you don’t have to install anything on the host computer.