I’m going to be attending USA Cycling’s National Championships come the end of June. I’ve been training a good amount, my percentage of body fat, according to the scale that I have, puts me back at competition weight and percentage body fat. Although, when you look at guys like George Hincapie, pro cyclist on the BMC Racing Team and former domestique to each of Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France wins, and compare his physique along with how tall he is, he’s 6’2″, and weighs in at 165 pounds, one can’t help but be amazed. A dangerous skeleton is what he looks like

I’ve decided to take today, Friday, June 11th, as a rest day as I had two interviews. The first was with a recruiting agency that came highly recommended, which was okay, and the other was for a company involved in software creation for the Medical industry. The software development company appears to be more focused towards a high-paced software customization environment that is what would suit me best, I would think.

We shall see.

Whoa, hard to believe, I had a return call from Wells Fargo. I thought I had done rather poorly in the interview that I had conducted while in Japan. The position was going to be in, I think, one of the Dakotas. I’m quite sure that I’m wrong on that; however, I do recall that it was a north central state… maybe. I also received a return call from the City of Miramar for a temp position setting up the network at one of their new buildings, along with a few others companies.

I lose track of my phone for a few days and people actually call me; however, when I do have my phone on me I receive few calls… irony abound.

I’m going to be working on a web-app for a local Montessori school. The app will have a front-end where users will be able to browse information pertaining to… something, and, once logged-in, will be able to browse lessons for each student, as defined by their grade-level. I’m unsure of how each student is currently defined in the Montessori database, if at all, although I do see that, on their home page, they have a student log-in. The information that each student is going to be able to access is going to be defined by their grade level and, being that it is a Montessori school, the child is able to complete each lesson at a speed that suits them.

Perhaps I will just make my page an extension of pages they are able to access when they are logged in? Will it be separate, similar to how my school’s was done? We shall see as I’m further able to define the requirements of this project.

Back in late 2008 I commented how our Congress was setting up the world so that we were repeating the actions taken during the Hoover-Roosevelt era. Today I found an article that discussed the Smoot-Hawley tariff act, which was enacted in 1930, as explained by a free-marketer and how it exasperated what would have been a normal, healthy market correction and turned it into the Great Depression.

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the biggest baffoun of them all?”

The biggest one of them all has to be me. I bought Ford debt when everyone thought it was going to die and sold it when it was still in the crapper but now that GM and Chrysler, reborn as Government Motors, are dead, Ford had outlived some of it’s competition. Now it’s debt is selling for close to par. I bought AIG when the credit markets were dying and when things went from horrible to bad I decided to sell.

In the case of AIG, I bought and sold preferred shares that paid out quarterly, the Ford debt that I had bought paid out semi-annually and were offering a yield of almost 33% with the potential for 225% gain if it again traded at par. I would have had them at no cost within 3 years which would be about now.

Furthermore, through my failed attempts at trading to service my debt I’ve nailed the hammer into my coffin and have begun to pile dirt onto my own grave… the obvious solution to that would be that no one shouldn’t let the mentally handicapped near phones to call their broker…

“O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming
whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight…
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er land of the enslaved, home of the coward.”

A few of the first lines, the second to last line and my adaptation to the final line of “The Star Spangled Banner” in support of how I feel America is at this point in time, or, at least, my fiscal situation as it now stands thanks to the powers of coercion.  Thankfully, my woes aren’t alone, the Euro is suffering a similar fate that I am suffering.   Misery loves company.  Seems to be that the world is waking up to the sovereign debt problem and that, out of all the blundering governments, the European Union is bad, the Japanese Yen is bad, the British Pound is bad, the U.S. Dollar is bad; however, the Dollar is the best of the worst.

Enough of my blabbering though, I’m back in the U.S. after 3 weeks in Japan and 5 weeks in Utah designing a accounting firm’s website that had a bunch of tax related blather on it’s pages as well as a secure, 256-bit -encryption backed portal for clients to submit tax documentation to the firm’s accountants.  My search for full-time employment continues to find pot-holes.  If all continues to do so poorly I might consider Japan, although, that would pretty much put a halt to my Paralympic dreams, unless, I became a Japanese citizen, which is probably a rather difficult option to pursue.

Teaching English in Japan is something I am looking in to that wouldn’t require a change of citizenship.  The Japanese government offers a program called the JET program which is the Japan English Teachers program where the Japanese Government hires U.S. citizens to teach English in Japan.  One of the requirements, and the biggest hurdle one must overcome for consideration in this program, is college graduation, something which I have recently acquired.  My mother knows some people that work with the Japanese Embassy so that is something I will look into for next year if the employment picture continues to be as grim as it is now for me.

I’m reading today’s Casey’s Daily Dispatch written by Doug Casey, whom is an American-born free market economist, best-selling financial author, and international investor and entrepreneur.   Today he’s commenting on taxes, of course, as today is the day that vampires suck a portion of the life-blood from the productive so that they can buy votes from the non-productive, for example, the Economic Recovery Act, and other such things, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

I spent the day working in a tax office.  One would think this would be a long day for the tax preparation organization that I’m designing a website for, but, it was a rather brief day as most everything has been filed over the past two weeks and today was just finalizing the stragglers.

Today Doug Casey is lamenting about an article written by David Leonhardt for the New York Times in which Leonhardt comments; “If anything, the government numbers I’m using here exaggerate how much of the tax burden falls on the wealthy. These numbers fail to account for the income that is hidden from tax collectors — a practice, research shows, that is more common among affluent families. “Because higher-income people are understating their income,” Joel Slemrod, a tax scholar at the University of Michigan, says, “We’ve been overstating their average tax rates.”” which is absolute bull-hockey.  The amounts collected from high net-worth individuals and their multiple-streams of income, which I was building up towards until I was coerced into taking an investment that hampered my business’s cash flow to the extent that financing it has taken me to the edge of insolvency, is a large percentage of the government’s total income stream and history has shown that when the tax-base is small but, as a percentage, it removes a large portion of income from that small tax -base, things begin to collapse.

One of Mr. Casey’s comments later in the article regarding our newest overlord’s plans at picking the pockets of us peasants is closest to how I feel about government sympathizers… “regardless of what Mr. Leonhardt might have to say on the topic, progressively picking the pockets of the productive in order to expand the scale and scope of the government may just be the opposite of building a more competitive economy.“  I’m sure that Mr. Leonhardt would be the same type of person as those older individuals you find marching around Red Square in Moscow praising Communism.  Of course, I’m not just against President Obama, no, that would be too simple, I’m anti-Big Goverment Republicans, as well.  Heck, I’m more or less against anyone whom tells me how I should live my life if my means of living does no harm to them…

Of course, it has been that way in the U.S. for quite a while, as well.  For example, the creation of the Federal Reserve following the bank solvency panic that occurred in 1907 is a good example of how what starts out as a novel idea to stabilize something with Government turned into the giant-bloodsucking parasite that is the FRB… I wonder if they’re hiring Tech Geeks?

Yesterday the Nasdaq offered a press release that Citizens Republic Bancorp (Nasdaq: CRBC) now meets their “Required $1 minimum value or they will be de-listed” regulation. Meaning, fears of their de-listing have subsided, the skies are again blue for them, they are free to pass go, free to collect $200. The press release sharing CRBC’s ability to meet this regulation can be found here.

CRBC is a Flint, Michigan-based bank. Michigan, imho, is what happens when politicians get to lead an economy. Look at the former USSR, a.k.a. Russia, or east Germany as an example. Under Statist control they had nothing going for them, during the Cold War the world was thinking that our children would all be speaking Russian… that is, if we survived the resulting nuclear winter. However, we’ve overcame all of those obstacles and, under the leadership of Freedom, have shown enormous progress.

Another example is Japan and the arrival of Commodore Perry on 黒船, the Black Ship. Huge growth from the time of his landing to the late 80s; however, economically, not much has occurred from the 80s to now. Make-work projects to keep employment high but if you go into the center of my grandfather’s town, where he had gone from a peasant farmer to the Chairman of the Board of a multi-million US dollar recycling company that he founded, these make-work projects and high taxes are stifling growth and causing the slow demise of many a livelihood.

This is, of course, kept afloat by Japanese citizens purchasing Japanese Government Bonds but as more and more of the population reaches retirement age and the people that fueled the bond purchases begin to disappear, one is led to look at the obvious outcome and shake his head in disdain.

I have memories of sitting in front of the 13 inch television in my mother and father’s room as people were taking sledgehammers to the Berlin Wall. What it meant, I can assure you, I hadn’t an inkling of an idea but when I think back upon it and recall current Germany, all I can do is shake my head in amazement; freedom wins.

In the work world, the company I’m out here designing a web-site for has taken their site live and is using the secure portal to allow customers to securely upload their tax information for preparation to feed the monster squid-leech that is the U.S. Government come April 15th. Within the next few days I will be treating my employer, as well as the employees, to dinner at one of the restaurants that one of the CPA firm’s clients works at as they asked us to stop by some time for a free beer. Of course, we’ll be ordering a few more items, as well..

We would make Obama and other Keynesians proud, were “Spreading the Wealth“.

I recently picked up some shares of CRBC. Looking over the market price of it’s debt, Bonds, they appear to be trading for close to par. I think this means that the bond market views CRBC’s risk of default as very unlikely. Since the bonds are trading at close to par and the fact that the share price of a share of Common was about $1.00 it might be safe to presume that the share price could rise significantly.

Such an occurrence transpired with my purchase of Callon Petroleum (NYSE: CPE) debt [maturing in late 2010], which was trading for about 50 cents on the dollar. After reviewing their financial statements and speaking to their CFO I bought some of their debt. A few weeks after I concluded my transaction, CPE made an exchange offer for their debt that would have been quite a bit in my favor had I not decided to accept the exchange (the exchange was voted for in favor by a large owner of their debt, meaning, I would have been good to bypass their exchange offer and let the bonds I held mature); however, being the idiot I am, I accepted their exchange offer, even after one of the few people I trust with financial opinions suggested I not. When this occurred a share of their common went for trading at $1 on January 1st, 2010 to around $8 where it closed yesterday.

Going back to the subject of this post, we have insiders, like the CEO and CFO, making share purchases of the common. There is no one that knows the inner-workings of a company better than the CFO and, as I’m on the verge of insolvency, anyway, I see little harm in taking big, albeit educated, risks with my capital.

Another company that I’m looking in to is Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI). Carl Icahn, whom has been on the board of many companies that were teetering on the edge of insolvency, recently unloaded a large portion of the share that he held; however, Mark J. Wattles, the former CEO of Hollywood Entertainment, has made a big purchase.

I leave next week for Japan, spend about 3.5 weeks there, and then return to the U.S.   Plans have changed several times while here and the company that I’m here for has ended up choosing a templated design for their website that has a normal web layout with a pre-built secure customer portal for tax form submittal.  All in all, failure on my part I am led to believe, but think that it might have taken much longer to develop the explanations of all the services that they offer and combining that with the secure portal. On a cost basis, it is saving them a good amount on billable hours as they decided to pay me on an hourly basis rather than for the project, but I digress.

When I was first undergoing the development I was probably logging 14 – 16 hour days but since they’ve decided on the templated design (I was the one that found and offered their solution of the company that offered a pre-built design for CPA/Accounting firms, too, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain). I have reduced my work time to 1 – 3 hours every few days, meaning, I’m finding more time for cycling, which is, I suppose, a good thing…

It seems that the weather gods are against me. Perhaps I’m not providing the quality or quantity of offerings that they require, perhaps it is that the Utah deities don’t like handicapped athletes, perhaps it’s that they prefer winter Paralympic athletes over summer Para athletes, perhaps it’s something else, regardless, today was a snow day that stopped me from riding. Snow would never stop me from riding in south Florida.

Some might say snow hasn’t stopped me in south Florida because it doesn’t snow in south Florida, and sure, it’s been that way in the past but, as running the investing operations for Vitalex Corp. has taught me, “Past Results do not guarantee future performance…“, and not remembering those words when it really mattered has forced me into quite the fiscal-pickle.

Regardless, on the job front, I’m currently looking into Google Wave and integrating that with the site I’m developing. Wave is a collaboration tool that is similar to e-mail but offers much more in-depth functionality than corresponding via text messages does. It allows, among many other things, live correspondence rather than the text messaging everyone is so used to. For example, the text Tim is typing fills in where the text for Tim is going to appear in a normal texting application, i.e. AIM or YAHOO! messenger. In those apps all that you know is that Tim, if Tim is the name of the person you’re corresponding with, is writing something. You can’t begin to formulate your response until Tim has finalized his message, hit enter and you’ve read it.

Wave allows you to view text, key stroke for key stroke, as the other individual is typing (although you can, also, at your discretion, turn this ability off). Of course one may say, “So, Alex, who cares?” and I won’t hold it against you for having that opinion, but, from what I can see, this would improve productivity a good amount as you don’t have to wait for them to finish typing for you to think how you should reply and then begin typing. There are, of course, many other things that Wave allows, thankfully, I won’t elaborate with my horrid explanations on those. If you’re interested in learning more, go here. Although I really do doubt that my poor explanation of its features has intrigued anyone enough to actually look into this.