Mystery Trip Revealed

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I’ve been quite coy about what I’m up to this weekend, but now all can be revealed: a couple of months ago, I got an invitation in the mail to Tom Sosnoff‘s 60th birthday party. It was very deliberately a surprise party, and Tom has been such a big part of my life, I decided to do something I hardly ever do and make plans to travel on my own. I kept checking in with the crew at Tastytrade, and Tom had no clue what was forthcoming. Needless to say, it was quite a grand fete.

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Cancel That Bake Sale

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Here’s the headline news from this morning’s Palo Alto newspaper. It seems that a local high school, St. Francis, invested $15,000 into SnapChat when it was just starting. They sold out at the $17 IPO price for a cool $24,000,000. Kind of a shame that they didn’t hold on just a couple more days, eh? I have a feeling there are some school boards that will be getting some very bad ideas based on this article. (Incidentally, it looks like the value of those shares would be $40,000,000 as of this writing, not even two full trading days as a public firm).

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Pick Your Poison

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Thank Jesus in heaven, this goddamned election is almost over.

While walking through downtown Palo Alto yesterday, I saw a man dressed up as Uncle Sam holding up a big handwritten sign that was obviously pro-Trump, anti-Hillary. I assure you, this is the first such thing I’ve seen in the Bay Area. Indeed, I haven’t seen one – – not ONE – – Trump sign in town. Even those who secretly support him are too afraid of being ostracized.

Another man was in Uncle Sam’s face, telling him with a smirk that violence is the only thing Trump supporters understood. I didn’t get close enough to hear what was going on, but they were arguing with one another at length. The whole thing made me sad for them, and sad for this once-proud country of ours.

This election between two totally shitball candidates – – one of them, an ungodly corrupt, amoral human who touts her lack of a dick as her principal qualification, and the other a hypersensitive megalomaniac man-child who fancies himself a genius businessman but simply is a grown-up rich kid – – is nothing short of embarrassing for this country. The next four years are going to suck. I wouldn’t be that surprised if we wind up with a president named “Timothy” before the year 2020.

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