I was thinking yesterday and decided to get back into the stock market. I’ve got my 401k set up and participate in Microsoft’s employee stock purchase program and I get MSFT stock for bonuses, etc. But I don’t really have a diverse portfolio. About half my investments (everything not in my 401k basically) is in MSFT.
I figure that I’ve got a long way to go before I need to retire, so I’m pretty ok with high risk investments. I figure I’ll put between 20% and 50% of my portfolio into high risk stuff and keep the rest in my relatively diverse 401k, which is weighted towards tracking the S&P 500.
With that in mind, I opened up a new Roth IRA account with a bit of money in it. Not sure if I’ll actually qualify for Roth or not, but we’ll see. In any case, I bought some shares in the Harris & Harris Group (TINY) with this money. They’re a venture capital firm which invests solely in nanotech startups and is publicly traded. I’ve long been a fan of nanotech so I figure this’ll get my feet a bit wet in the nanotech world.
Then I sold a few shares of MSFT and with that money bought some Biosante Pharmaceuticals (BPA), Shanda Interactive (SNDA), and Netease (NTES).
Biosante is a small drug company that is working on hormone therapy delivered by a gel you apply to your skin. They have something in the pipeline for female sexual dysfunction, which is something that could be bigger than viagra.
Shanda and Netease are both Chinese companies traded in the US. They both make and sell MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games) which are very popular in China. The sad thing about Shanda is it’s already had quite a run up, but China’s a big country with a very small portion of its populace online. They’re getting online though and they’re the sort that like to play computer games. Netease has not had the same runup as Shanda this year (though it did very well last year), but has only recently gotten into the gaming business.
And no, I didn’t just come up with these picks out of the blue. I went over to fool.com and read up on the industries I was interested in and made a few picks. We’ll see how they do. I figure every once in a while I’ll cash out some MSFT and diversify a bit more.
Just finished playing Half-Life 2. It was awesome: everything I had hoped it would be. The graphics were out of this world and the physics were mind-blowing. Everything in the game world being interactive was a real change. The puzzles were straightforward (which I like in an action game) yet fun. There were great "themed" levels where you use one particular weapon or ability a bunch.
The one downside was that the story felt a bit clipped. It seemed like it started in the middle, which isn’t so odd, but that it also ended in the middle. Loose ends were not tied up and it wasn’t at all clear at the end of the game exactly what I’d accomplished in terms of world-saving.
Oh well. The rest of the game was good enough to make up for this for me and, hey — it gives them plenty material for a Half-Life 3.
Ok, so this Polar S410 heart rate monitor is pretty cool. I wear a band around my chest when I work out that has electrodes on it and also a watch. The watch receives the heart rate measurements as I go and stores them in its very limited memory. I think a higher end model must have orders of magnitude more memory than this one, but that’s ok. It serves fine for my purposes.
Anyway, I come back to my computer after the exercise and download the data into the software that came with the watch. The download process is pretty weird. The watch sort of chirps into the computer’s microphone.
The software, Polar Precision Performance, is pretty cool. Attached are some screenshots. I don’t know a good way to format images on this MSN spaces thing yet, but here they are.
The calendar mode is pretty neat. You can see what exercises you did on what days. I included two samples of exercise heart rates and histograms. They’re pretty self-explanatory. The heart rate history one shows average heart rate over exercises from various days. This would probably be more useful to people doing serious endurance training and repeating the same exercise each time. With me I vary my exercises so much my heart rate bounces around alot. But one interesting thing to note is that it tends to be higher on days I’m doing individual exercise than on the days I see my trainer. There’s also a screenshot of the time in HR zones history that shows the total time spent in pre-defined (as a percent of max heart rate) heart rate zones.
Anyway, as for the title of the post: the second and third screenshots are from today, where as an experiment I played Dance Dance Revolution on my X-Box for an hour instead of going to the club. As you can see from the heart rate measurements (and compare them with the ones from my workout with my trainer yesterday) DDR is a pretty high intensity video game. It’ll add some nice variety into my workouts when I don’t feel like going to the Pro Club for whatever reason.
Lost 3 pounds last week. Stephanie (my dietician) made no changes to my diet, but I did have my second visit with my psychiatrist today. She’s nice enough, but it’s hard to see what we can really do if we only talk every 5 weeks or so. Basically I say everything is going well and she says glad to see that and we do that for about an hour. She is very encouraging, though. Maybe that’s her job.
I seriously need to find a good caesar salad dressing that fits my nutritional requirements. Stephanie suggested one on Monday that I need to check out. I really like grilled chicken caesar salads if I can find one that works.
In answer to some questions from comments: 1. Karen: Yes. No more cookies, at least for the next several months. 2. Jen: For exercise I do the eliptical trainer, stairmaster, treadmil, and upright bike. And tomorrow I’m going to try DDR for exercise. I’ll post more about that tomorrow. 3. Nana: Soybeans count as protein, not veggies. And edamame would be great, but salt is not really allowed. I should ask Stephanie about that though. I do enjoy edamame.
Well, I lost 4.2 pounds last week, for a total of about 10 pounds in 2 weeks. Not bad. If I keep this rate up, I’ll weigh nothing at all in no time. Unfortunately, I’m sure I’ll slow down, but then I think I’ll up the workouts from 5 a week to 6 a week.
As for the diet, this week my dietican added yogurt to the diet. Yippee! Actually, I have no strong feelings about yogurt one way or the other. She did specify a brand though – Cascade Fresh Yogurt. Apparently most yogurts have a ton of sugar in them, but this brand uses fruit and milk sugars, so it’s not as bad for you.
Anyway, the upshot is I’ll be adding a serving of yogurt into my day or maybe replacing some soy nuts or an apple with yogurt.
The point of this is, according to the dietician, to see how my body responds to a bit of dairy. Let’s see what it decides to do.
So now that I’m in my second week of 20/20, I can start to have different things for my snacks rather than just shakes. Specifically, I can have 2 ounces of protein and either a half cup of berries or a small apple. I’ve been sticking to my shakes for my morning snacks, but in the afternoons I’ve taken to eating an apple and either 2 ounces of jerkey or a serving of soy nuts.
And the important part of this post is that soy nuts aren’t bad. They’re salty and crunchy. Good stuff. Try ’em out sometime.
This mediaweek story reveals 99.8% of FCC complaints are basically fabricated, stamped out en masse by an organization called the Parents Television Council.
I bet people were a bit upset about some of the "indecency" on television, but I seriously doubt they would take the time to find out how to go about compalining to the FCC, let alone actually do it. The fact that one activist group can basically censor TV is pretty sad.
Saw my dietician, Stephanie, this morning for 20/20. Got a few changes to my diet.
First, instead of my snacks being a shake with 1/2 cup of berries, I can substitute any 2 ounces of protein for the shake. So I can have 2oz. jerkey or 2oz. soy nuts, etc. I can also substitute a small apple for the 1/2 cup of berries, since berries aren’t in season.
Second, vegetables are added in this week. Most veggies that aren’t very starchy are in. I’m supposed to have about 2 cups of them a day, half with lunch and half with dinner. For lunch today I had some grilled salmon with a cup of broccoli and a shake with strawberries as my first meal with veggies.
As to progress for the first week, I’ve lost 6 pounds so far. Some water weight in there, no doubt, but it’s still a good start. I need to figure out a good way to post a graph or chart on here.
I think this pass by the Supreme Court on hearing the case against banning masks in New York is a pretty sad statement about free speech in america. Anonymous speech strikes me as some of the most important speech to protect. After all, if you’re speaking out in unpopular ways against the powers that be, might you not want to hide exactly who you are to avoid harrasment and intimidation?
Or am I being too loose in my interpretation of "or abridging the freedom of speech"?