I don't think I have seen this since 2009 -- a full weekend, and in this case, seven consecutive days in which there will be no wells coming off the confidential list. We won't see the next well coming off the confidential list until September 3, 2016, next Saturday.
Wonder, wonder, why, I love the Bakken?
I Wonder Why, Dion & The Belmonts
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DFW
Sunday night. Surfing YouTube. Sitting at the kitchen table in our little hovel. Low lighting inside. Dark outside. Other than occasional headlights moving through the apartment complex, it is completely dark outside. I had not noticed that before, but it appears we have no streetlights in the complex. That probably explains the high rate of bikes being stolen. I bring mine indoors at night.
I couldn't be in a better mood. In our 39 years of marriage, we've never really had nice furniture, but over the past few months -- beginning in April, 2016 -- we have really acquired some nice Stickley furniture. I cannot articulate how incredible it is to sit in our dining room with the furniture. It completely changes everything.
It is interesting how little pieces seem to come together.
Our younger daughter and her husband sent us a wonderful wall decoration -- "Welcome" with the silhouette of Bison bison bison. It complements the furniture perfectly.
With no Bakken wells coming off the confidential list for the next six or seven days, it's going to be a long, long week.
It will give me a chance to catch up on some reading and some surfing.
The fall 2016 event is expected to see the debut of the next-generation iPhone 7
and iPhone 7 Plus, which are rumored to feature improved cameras,
better processors, and improved water resistance, implemented through
the removal of the headphone jack and the introduction of a new flush,
pressure-sensitive home button. Both devices are said to look similar to
the iPhone 6s, with the same general size and shape, but with relocated antenna bands that no longer span the back of the devices.
Original Post
The next Apple "launch" is sometime in September, next month. Lots of rumors, as usual.
One rumor: Apple will "remove" the headphone "jack" from the new iPhone 7. If Apple does not remove the headphone "jack" I will be quite disappointed in Tim Cook. Steve would have removed the "jack" at least one iteration ago (the 6s) and even possibly two iterations ago (the 6).
I mentioned that to my wife earlier this morning. This afternoon I took a bike ride to the Apple store in Southlake (stopping at Costco and Barnes & Noble, along the way). At the back of the story is where they keep accessories: drones, headphones, power cords and adapters, cases, external hard drives (terabytes of storage).
By the way, you can get 2 TB of brand-name external hard drive storage for $69 at Costco; at Apple, brand-name external 2 TB storage will cost $109. Add another 8% at each store for tax. But I digress.
In the past, the back end of the store with the accessories has been pretty much a "lot" of everything. But today, it seemed about 75% of the space was for Beats wireless over-the-ear headphones and Beats wireless ear buds.
The display almost shouted: "Yes, the iPhone 7 will NOT have the headphone jack. You will need a wireless pair of ear buds or headphones.
Again, "it" just seems to shout: ""Yes, the iPhone 7 will NOT have the headphone jack. You will need a wireless pair of ear buds or headphones."
If Tim Cook does not pull the headphone jack, I will be quite disappointed, not because it makes any difference to me (I don't have an iPhone) but because it suggests to me Tim Cook is not willing to skate to where the puck will be.
The iPhone already has wireless built in, so this would be removing a piece of hardware the iPhone no longer needs. The "jack" is the long pole in the teepee with regard to the thickness of the iPhone: removing the "jack" will allow Apple to make the iPhone thinner.
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Death Spiral
ObamaCare -- the "insurance program that promised you can keep your doctor, you can keep your health plan" -- is in a death spiral. I think the milliondollarway was the first non-commercial (no ads) blog that used that phrase, "death spiral."
Enrollment in the insurance exchanges for President Obama’s signature
health-care law is at less than half the initial forecast, pushing
several major insurance companies to stop offering health plans in
certain markets because of significant financial losses.
As a
result, the administration’s promise of a menu of health-plan choices
has been replaced by a grim, though preliminary, forecast: Next year,
more than 1 in 4 counties are at risk of having a single insurer on its
exchange.
Debate over how perilous the predicament is
for the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, is nearly as
partisan as the divide over the law itself.
But at the root of the
problem is this: The success of the law depends fundamentally on the
exchanges being profitable for insurers — and that requires more people
to sign up.
In February 2013, the Congressional Budget Office
predicted that 24 million people would buy health coverage through the
federally and state-operated online exchanges by this year.
Just
11.1 million people were signed up as of late March.
Obama no longer cares. He has moved on. Getting ready for the next chapter in his life which most likely includes a Clintonesque MuslemUSA Foundation.
By 2018, if not by the end of 2017, we will pretty much see the end of ObamaCare prompting Ms Clinton to go to Congress for the "public option" -- a euphemism for "US National Health Service." Medicare for all.
And she may very well get it. Especially if the GOP loses the Senate and the House. And the Supreme Court.
Jon Ledecky was already having
an unusually heady day for an 11-year-old: The principal at his
elementary school in Queens, NY, had introduced him as a future U.S.
president, then Jon had given a speech to his classmates and then he had
walked outside with the priest who had given the blessing.
That's when
the yellow butterfly fluttered onto the back of his hand and sat there,
beautiful and calm. "Oh, my God," the priest said. "It's a sign."
So, yes, Jon had cause to think that he was destined to
do something great. And he did go on to build a billion-dollar
business, give away millions to charity and, last month, at 58, become
co-owner of the New York Islanders. By most standards he lived up to
that lepidopteran promise—and had the markers to prove it.
But what if, all along, none of that was the prophecy?
What if Jon's true fate was to meet Mary Gen Hagan one day in 1990, to
instantly know that she was his brother's match and to set out to
introduce them? The next weekend she and David Ledecky would talk for 3
1/2 hours at a party in Old Town Alexandria, VA, and David would snatch
her card from Jon and call her a day later. In two years they would
marry. In 1997 they would have a baby and name her Katie.
"When I met Mary Gen, things slowed down," Jon says.
"That's why I was so emphatic that my brother meet her. It was like a
bright light shined on her and said, This is your brother's wife. Dave
was not in the mood to go to that party, and I literally dragged him.
Who knows? If you believe in faith—and Katie has this deep belief in
faith—something was going on there. That was the butterfly moment."
Let's enjoy another Ledecky moment. She mentions her grandparents in North Dakota, including her paternal paternal grandfather: WWII US Army surgeon; Pacific Theater; Purple Heart, Williston physician.
In the video below, her uncle Jon is also mentioned.
Several pools were mentioned in the video, but not the one I swam in: the outdoor Harmon Park pool. I believe a very memorable middle school teacher worked at that pool during the summer. I never had her for a teacher, and I never met her.
Katie Ledecky Rio Olympics Interview | LIVE 8-8-16
The Ford At The Star: this is the new corporate headquarters for the Dallas Cowboys, in Frisco, just a few miles from where we live. The stadium opened last night for the high school's first varsity football game of the season. Some data points from the article:
the real estate development company building the largest team headquarters in the NFL: owned by the Jones family
12,000-seat indoor stadium, Dallas Cowboys to share with eight high schools in Frisco
91 acres
510,000 square feet for Dallas Cowboys offices and training facilities
two outdoor practice fields (in addition to the indoor stadium)
fitness center, allowing members to train near players and Cowboys cheerleaders (Legends, the hospitality business owned jointly by the Cowboys and the Yankee, will book events)
a 16-floor, 300-room Omini hotel and conference center
a 200,000-square foot medical center
a 200,000-square foot shopping center
400,000 square feet of office space
jogging trails, parking, and plazas will take another 60 acres
$1.2 billion project
$115 from the city of Frisco and the Frisco independent school district
every major pro sports team in the Dallas area now have a presence in Frisco
the Dallas Cowboys
the Frisco RoughRiders (Class AA affiliate of the Texas Rangers, MLB)
the Texas Legends (an NBA development league linked to the Dallas Mavericks)
the Dallas Stars (NHL)
F.C. Dallas (MLS -- Major League Soccer)
Speaking of the Dallas Cowboys: Earliest this summer I happened to catch a short segment on some sports talk show about the Dallas Cowboys. One analyst said that computer models predicted that Dallas would be #1 in their division or conference, or some such thing. The other analyst countered that with the likelihood of Tony Romo suffering another injury, it was unlikely that Dallas would have a winning season. The first analyst said that one cannot "forecast" the success of professional football team based on the likelihood of injuries. What? You have got to be kidding. The computer models did not take into account players' injury history?
Whatever.
Today in the Sunday Dallas Morning News, front page story, I see that Tony Romo won't be playing in the season opener: an MRO shows that he has a lower vertebral fracture.
Right on cue and absolutely predictable.
By the way, it now makes sense. With regard to Colin Kaepernick not standing for the national anthem. It turns out it's a personal problem. It has nothing to do with the US. Kaepernick is sulking. His back-up quarterback is outperforming him. It is likely Kaepernick will not be on the 49ers roster two weeks from now. That's the good news. The bad news: he could end up on the Dallas roster. Whatever. He refusal to stand during the national anthem is simply a personal problem, a rich adolescent sulking.
Our older daughter has informed me that Olivia's soccer team is tied for the #1 position in their soccer league, after winning the season's opener, 2 - 0. LOL.
They win their first game of the season, along with the other half of the league (although I suppose there were some games that ended in a tie) -- but with all wins (one) and no losses, they have to be in first place. This is not entirely true. The rankings are also determined by the number of goals made by the winning team and how many goals the winning team allowed the losing team. It sounds pretty complicated to me. That's why colleges offer degrees in sports, I suppose.
Olivia is "playing up" this year. She and her closest friend are a year younger than the rest of her team and most of the league. Olivia played defense midfielder and was awarded two assists, an assist for each of the points scored.
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Dinner For One
The potatoes: boiled in a pot of water with one cube of chicken bullion added.
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Spiralizing
I was also late to the spiralizer party. I was introduced to spiralizing by our older daughter, who in turn learned about it from our younger daughter. I bough a spiralizer from Amazon.com about one month ago but have not used it yet. The link takes you to a nice Los Angeles Times article on spiralizing -- coincidentally posted after I received my spiralizer.
From the article: spiralizing broccoli stems. Isn't that a cool idea. I throw away half (maybe more) of the broccoli I buy simply because I thought one only ate the florets.
Note: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, relationship, or travel decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. If this important to you, go to the source.
G.E.
has some built-in advantages. Its installed base is huge. For example,
the company says more than a third of the world’s electricity is
generated on G.E. equipment. It can make progress simply by winning over
the aircraft makers, oil companies, hospitals and utilities that now
depend on G.E. machinery.
G.E.
is starting to attract a developer following. Tata Consultancy
Services, for one, says it now has 500 programmers designing and
developing Predix applications for customers in the electric-utility,
aviation and health care industries. G.E. also promotes partnerships
with Infosys, Wipro and Capgemini to help business write Predix
software.
In my original post, "electricity from all sources." Then in this NY Times article, more than a third of the world's electricity is generated on GE equipment.
By the way, note the photograph of the idyllic NY stream that accompanied this article and not the GE turbine power plant just upstream. Had this been an article on the oil sector, one could imagine a photograph of an oil spill.
Original Post
The other day I mentioned that I have changed my investment strategy a bit, but just before changing that strategy, I had embarked on acquiring more shares of GE on a regular basis. I think GE, long term, is going to do very well in energy (wind, oil, natural gas, electricity from all sources).
Within 24 or 48 hours of posting that, I came across this New York Times article: Amtrak's answer for its aging Acela fleet: 160 mph trains.
A new era of high-speed train travel is coming to the nation’s busiest rail corridor.
Federal officials on Friday announced a $2.45 billion loan to Amtrak for the purchase of state-of-the-art trains to replace the aging Acela trains that use the Northeast Corridor from Washington to Boston.
Amtrak plans to put the first of 28 new trains into service in about five years. Once they are fully deployed, officials expect the Acela to depart every half-hour between Washington and New York and every hour between New York and Boston. That should increase passenger capacity by about 40 percent, they said.
While the new trains will not approach the speeds of some Asian and European trains, officials said they hoped that the new Acela would travel at 160 miles per hour in some places, up from 135 m.p.h. now. The trains will theoretically be able to go faster than 160 m.p.h., though that would require a huge upgrade of the track system.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a longtime Amtrak supporter who frequently travels by train between Washington and his home in Delaware, announced the loan at the station in Wilmington that is named in his honor.
Now, why would that catch my attention? And why would I blog about it?
Because:
The new trains will be manufactured in New York State by Alstom, a French company that builds high-speed trains around the globe.
The CEO predicts GE's industrial segments -- from wind farms to locomotives and jet engines -- will compose 90% of the conglomerate's total revenue by 2018, a substantial leap from 58% last year, according to an annual regulatory filing.
Something tells me Alstom will subcontract the locomotives to GE. Could be wrong.
But for me this is what is important:
the blog keeps me interested in things I might not otherwise follow; and,
readers send me links to stories I might not find on my own.
By the way, about four months ago, my wife and I were "lost" out near the Texas Motor Speedway when we happened to notice some brand new BNSF locomotives in what looked like a manufacturing / industrial park, with a huge "GE" loco on one of the buildings. From The Star-Telegram awhile back:
FORT WORTH --
General Electric’s locomotive plant in far north Fort Worth is putting a strain on the company’s relationship with one of its Pennsylvania-based unions.
The plant, which opened in 2012 near Texas Motor Speedway, employs more than 500 people and builds railroad locomotives and mining equipment.
The facility, near Texas 114 and Farm Road 156, cranks out an average of 1.2 locomotives per day, a plant manager has said, and those vehicles are bought by customers such as Fort Worth-based BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad, based in Omaha, Nebraska.
But workers at the Fort Worth plant aren’t union members, and that has caused some heartburn among union representatives in GE’s much older locomotive plant in Erie, PA.
