Day 601

What a dismal day. I got my August invoices out this morning and was forced to acknowledge that everything I billed out for the entire month didn't even come close to offsetting what I lost in the market in a single day. I'm utilizing a complex strategy involving gold, managed futures and inverse ETF's to minimize the carnage as best I can, but there's no way to avoid losing money on a day like this.

On the business shows, I keep hearing about contagion. The pundits keep wondering if the contagion will spread. I've got news for you guys. It's a bit late to worry about contagion when the patient already has the disease. When you look at all the mindless riots in London, the ineffectiveness of our congress here in the United States, the endless unrest in the Middle East, and the fact that the entire world is drowning in debt, it's no surprise that the markets were in turmoil today. We've managed to make a big mess of things and I wonder if we've got what it takes to clean everything up. What did that nursery rhyme say? All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again.

On a brighter note, I'm now the mayor of the Post Office on foursquare. Pretty soon I'll be the mayor of everything in my tiny, self-contained world. Foursquare has made me realize that I really don't do all that much away from the computer. If Dalmatians could design websites, I think my life would be more or less identical to what my dogs currently experience. Eat. Work. Sleep. Repeat. That's about it.

For months now, I've kept thinking that one of the wooden mileage markers on a trail where I walk the dogs was out of place. There was a marker that said "1/2" that was placed after the one mile marker. I was convinced this marker should have been placed before the one mile marker, until I realized today that it was exactly midway between the one mile and two mile markers. Duh. It's been saying one and a half miles all along. What a dummy I am.

Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day