the life of james

seriously overdue for an update. i will post pictures soon. i promise.

i was looking through the pictures on the new york times‘ recap of the past decade, Documenting the Decade, and a couple photos really struck me. what struck me wasn’t necessarily their beauty, but their meaning.

what strikes me so much about this one is not just the breathtaking beauty of the canadian rockies, but also the photo’s caption, which reads “Since I first visited the Canadian Rockies in the late 1970s, the Athabasca Glacier has receded several miles. However, to put things in perspective, geolocial markers that date back to the 19th century show that the glacier has been receding for centuries. Whether glaciers demonstrate that the past decade is meaningful or not, I leave to Nature to argue. And, while many glaciers are melting, others are stable or even growing in the Himalayas and Alaska. There is no question that there is global climate change. The biggest problem … it has always been so.”

look at the raccoon, staring with fascination at the photographer, as if to ask “what does that thing do?” every time i see a picture like this, it reminds me how precious and beautiful even the littlest of critters is, and how much like us they really are. or rather, how much like them we really are. it shocks me every time i hear people debate whether or not animals can really think or feel in the same way we do. is the raccoon’s expression any different from that of a baby who has just seen something new for the first time? conversely, is our animalistic side so much different from the raccoon’s?

statements like this are a slap in the face to me and everyone who makes a conscious choice to serve their country. many, like me, with degrees from prestigious universities have willingly sacrificed far higher paying jobs in the civilian world, gone far away from our homes and families, have forgone personal comforts that most americans take for granted, and have laid it all on the line, including our lives. even my soldiers who do not have a college degree have left their homes as young as seventeen. these men and women are great americans, who wear their uniforms with pride. the ones worth their salt, anyways.

it is not that we are asking too much of this generation — it’s that we aren’t asking anything of this generation, leaving the entire burden to be shouldered by a select few. what the hell has this generation done to deserve the luxuries it feels so entitled to? twitter?! television?! video games? text messaging?! all while sitting around getting so fat that their very health is jeopardized by their laziness?! so what has this generation done? at most, self-serving, self-gratifying but ultimately empty finger-pointing, protests, and agitation over issues they might actually understand if they were willing to dig deeper intellectually than wikipedia.

for all i’ve heard about the war in iraq and afghanistan, whose war is it really? whose lives has it really impacted? is there a draft? of those who say they suppost the troops, who amongst them has ever raised their hand to serve their country and see what is really going on? do most families even have a single service member amongst them? it is mere lip service. this isn’t this generations’ war, because it doesn’t really mean a damn thing to them, and they have never felt any direct impacts beyond a few minor inconveniences. this is a soldier’s war — a burden and experience shared by them alone, along with their families and the iraqi and afghani people. these are the ones who preserve and embody the american spirit and make america great, not the public.

true, not everyone is called to serve their country in the form of military service, but at least do something! join the peace corps. become a civil servant. plant a public garden. volunteer some time and money to a local food shelter or humanitarian organization and give back to society. check on your damn neighbor. live responsibly. until then, you haven’t earned the right to voice your opinion.

…

and to close it all out, an excellent quote by stephen colbert from TIME’s Top 10 Everything of 2009:

“Twitter went down today. If only there was some short, shallow, self-indulgent way to express my horror.”

—Stephen Colbert, sniffing at the year’s biggest online fad

well, james’ foray into the world of financial markets has officially hit three months, so after a quarter of trading, it’s time to gauge the results. his goal: beat the market and make some dough.

and the diagnosis: james is not bad. i’ve managed to pretty much mirror the dow jones industrial average, and for awhile, i was keeping pace with the s&p 500. my stock picks actually outperformed the s&p 500 when including dividend returns, but due to one very important factor (commissions), real returns were slightly lower. but i will get into that in a moment.

james vs the dow

james vs the s&p 500

my current holdings, top ten are listed below:

on the whole, i picked large US-based companies, because as a beginner, they were the ones with which i was most familiar:

breakdown vs the s&p 500:

at first, i jumped in expecting to do a lot of buying and selling. but one significant factor soon changed my notion of how to act: commissions. because i am just starting out and have not yet built a large enough portfolio or made enough trades, i am looking at $12.99/trade on etrade, or as low as $3 trades on sogotrade. it does help that many sites like etrade offer a certain number of free trades for new accounts, but unfortunately, once the free trades run out, the commissions begin. in all, between july and september, i had about a 5% expense ratio, which was the difference between matching the s&p 500 and matching the dow.

as a result, i gravitated towards large companies that pay out dividends, which i would hold on to instead of frequent buying and selling. as such, i could expect my portfolio to generally mirror the economy. with the recovering economy, that means i would see a generally upward growth rate, plus on top of that, i’d receive returns from dividends. not exactly the sexiest strategy, but until i have enough money to drop a few grand on a single trade, it’s the most effective.

my single best move was picking up starbucks, which yielded a 45% return, expenses included. my worst move was investing in kroeger, which netted me a 6% loss after expenses.

all in all, i saw a 5% gain during the third quarter after expenses. without expenses, gains would have doubled.

of course, all of this reflects only the part of my portfolio i actively traded. when considering mutual funds, i’ve actually managed to post a 17% gain after expenses. this is because most of my money goes into either my roth ira or a nasdaq-100 index fund (combined they hold over 75% of my investments), which are both extremely aggressive and offer high yields but also high risk. the roth ira is a usaa 2050 lifecycle fund, and the nasdaq-100 index fund is also through usaa.

the advantage of the mutual funds, of course, is that i don’t have to spend time placing trades, and i don’t pay commissions for trades, so they are much more diverse than my portfolio would be otherwise.

now if only i could figure out puts and calls and what have you…

i feel like such a badass. i should buy a harley.

james did it. james finally did it. he went out and bought a brand new 2010 dodge challenger srt8!!! it’s not quite james’ dream car (that title currently belongs to the ’70s version and its hemi cuda cousin, neither of which james can afford), but it’s the next best thing.

of course he had to get it in manual, decked out with all the goodies, to include:
- 6.1 liter hemi v8 engine, churning out 425 horses and 420 lb-ft of torque
- 6-speed tremec manual transmission
- 20″ wheels with brembo calipers/anti-lock brakes
- power sunroof
- 13 speaker, 322-watt amp, 200-watt subwoofer sound system
- am/fm/cd/dvd/hdd/mp3 radio with touch screen navigation system and voice recognition

he got it in all black, without the hood stripes.

additionally, james is planning to make a few additional modifications, including adding white rally stripes, an aftermarket shift knob, chrome rims, oracle halo headlamp and foglight kits, mopar racing seats, a mopar rear go-wing pedestal spoiler, and uconnect wifi, which would transform james’ srt-8 into a mobile wifi hotspot. but most excitingly of all, he is getting a custom paint job of the chicago skyline on each side of the car, with the words “chicago, il” on the rear quarter panels. the skyline will be entirely in white, to go with the white rally stripes on the hood, on an all-black car. it’s gonna be so fucking badass!

classic challenger r/t & hemi cuda convertible:

check out the oracle halo kit on this custom challenger below:

http://www.automotivelightstore.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=55

the white rally stripe kit:

http://www.ridergraphix.com/customers/Challenger_Gallery.html

mopar-tuned r/t with t/a style hood and rear pedestal go wing spoiler:

http://www.autoblog.com/2009/01/14/detroit-2009-dodge-challenger-r-t-accessorized-by-mopar/

custom paint job:
you’ll just have to wait and see!!!

happy birthday to me

i know it’s been awhile since my last update, but just to keep you posted, james is loving the latin clubs and the lovely ladies. other than that, it’s boring shit as usual. can’t wait til i get back to my platoon.

space needle, seattle - 31 march 2009

click on the pictures to view the gallery (50 photos)

Sixty-two days (at least) of freezing/starving/exhaustion/FUN. Aren’t you jealous? Though if I fail out it will be a lot shorter!

Rangers Lead the Way.

maybe it was the drastic change in weather from 70 degrees and sunny in el paso to below zero and snowing in chicago and champaign-urbana, but less than two weeks until ranger school, i’m sick.

this is pretty bad, because it interferes with my workout regimen, which is bad enough. but even worse, if it gets any worse and i lose weight, i will be underweight and they won’t even let me start the course.

also it interferes with my ability to go out and pick up college chicks, but that’s another story!

alas, it feels strange being in champaign-urbana. i’m back, and everyone looks so young to me now. everyone i know is gone, except a couple people who have stuck around. and even though i’m living just a block away from farizah, we aren’t even talking. when i originally planned to do hrap, the idea was to come back to campus so we could be together for a couple weeks. so here is the girl who i thought was the love of my life only one block away and i can’t even tell her i’m here.

it’s probably best that i don’t see her anyways. i still love her, but i also hate her, and i haven’t forgiven her for what she did to me. i don’t know how i’d react if i saw her. i don’t know what i’d feel, and i don’t know what i’d try to do. so for my own well-being, it’s best that i just stay away.

it sucks that things had to happen this way.