boilermaker75
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Posts posted by boilermaker75
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On 1/27/2024 at 10:49 AM, gfp said:
I don't know about land / farm prices being "cheap" in America. We have a family farm in Indiana (USA) and my Uncle is currently managing it. He told me a "medium quality farm in Indiana near our farm sold for $13,400 / acre recently." Now that price doesn't make sense to me for raw farmland at all. I see the financials, I know what the farm produces on average over time. There is tax. It just doesn't seem undervalued to me at all. Maybe somewhere else there is productive ag land that is much cheaper but $13,400/acre for Indiana farmland is just strange. I think @boilermaker75 has a similar farm in his family. Maybe he can chime in and tell me $13k is way off the mark and my uncle is smoking crack.
Sorry, I have had a hectic semester and didn't see this post earlier.
Yes good farm land in Indiana is going for $13-14k an acre.
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I was wandering the Los Angeles Public Library today. I saw these walls of old card catalog drawers.
I knew these were to honor donors, like having a brick with your name on it.
But I just had to go up and tug on one of them. I kid you not, as I was tugging I noticed the names on the drawer I randomly walked up to.
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30 minutes ago, Kuhndan said:
I live in the same house we bought 36 years ago. I’m couldn’t imagine living any place else.
Same with us. We moved into our current house in 1985! We did make it a little bigger with an addition around 1997.
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I am listening to the Reigle Family band. The guitarist was in my electromagnetic fields course last semester. She is taking my Keys to Learning class this semester and has dragged her brother, mandolin player, and her sister, the bassist, to the class. This is why I love teaching, meeting amazing students like the Reigles.
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3 hours ago, ValueArb said:
Any way to get a physical copy for my kids?
At this point it is only an eBook. I do want to get it in physical form, but it will be a while.
Edit: There are kindle apps to read on any device.
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On 9/12/2023 at 3:26 PM, Spekulatius said:
Search in Amazon for "Keys to Learning" and look for a book available in Kindle only and published in 2023.
There you have Mike's book:
Probably a good read for my son who started college just a few days ago. I asked him if he is interested.
The course I wrote this book for went well. The students loved the course. Many said the course and book were difference makers for them. I was always getting comments about how they couldn’t wait to come to class to hear what was next.
I had a lot of fun talking about neuroplasticity, mental models, purposeful practices, memory, sleep, mindset, grit, exercise, nutrition, meditation, breathing, relationships, etc., instead of electrical engineering.
The book has gotten 26 reviews on Amazon and 15 on Goodreads with a rating of over 4.9.
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My daughter took me to a Sting concert Oct 7. The guy is 74, but he looks like he is in better shape than most 20 year olds. Must work out every day.
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I'm actually tearing up a little. RIP Charlie.
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39 minutes ago, james22 said:
Everything that can be Invented has been Invented?
"The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Any one who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine. ... ," Ernest Rutherford (1933).
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9 hours ago, mbreject said:
Things have changed since my post. You no longer need to send in physical copy of your book if you publish a paperback.
Also, in the future, don't buy ISBN's if you're not going to publish a paperback. The only reason to buy an ISBN right now is to maximize profits when you publish on both KDP and Ingram using the same number. (It's free to publish paperbacks on either one, but it gets hard to manage if you use the free ISBN.)
I didn't want my kindle book to be listed as independently published so I needed to purchase an ISBN.
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On 7/13/2017 at 1:47 PM, mbreject said:
Oh and don't forget to copyright if you self-publish (if trad-pubbed, the publisher will do it for you.)
It costs $35 to register at https://copyright.gov/ If you have a paperback, you have to send them a copy of that as well. Copyright is free to register for Canadians, but I don't know where they go for that.
Thanks, I forgot to mention that. I just needed to upload a digital copy since I was only publishing a kindle book.
One ISBN costs $125, but 10 only costs $295. I went ahead and bought 10 in case I ever do a second edition, paperback edition, etc. because each one would requite its own ISBN. I also have another book in mind.
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3 hours ago, Spekulatius said:
Search in Amazon for "Keys to Learning" and look for a book available in Kindle only and published in 2023.
There you have Mike's book:
Probably a good read for my son who started college just a few days ago. I asked him if he is interested.
This is the fourth week of the semester. I thought students would find the course interesting and useful, but their response is way beyond what I had imagined. We have a web-based platform called Brightspace where course materials, grades, assignments, etc. can be found. One thing I do with my courses is have a weekly reflection assignment that is done on Brightspace. I ask the students to provide no more than a couple of sentences, since I must read them all. They can tell me anything they want about the class that week. Something they liked, or did not like, anything that surprised them, questions they have, etc. I have 135 students in two sections. All but one response out of over 400 has been extremely positive. The negative response was that I was too "wordy." That is something I have never been accused of and I definitely am not!
I had my first feedback on the book after class on Monday. A student came up and told me he was really enjoying the book and finding something surprising every other page.
I do think this course, and hopefully the book for those not able to take the course, will have a major impact.
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7 hours ago, bizaro86 said:
I took epistemology in high school and have been interested in the subject ever since. Would you be willing to post (or DM) a link to your book?
To keep this somewhat on topic (as I'll likely write my own book someday...) I'm curious whether you (or the others who have self published) found value in making your book available via Kindle Unlimited.
I have not looked into Kindle Unlimited. Spekulatius found the book and posted the link. The cover is the forgetting curve discovered by Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885.
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I am teaching a new class this Fall for first year engineering students. It is titled "Keys to Learning." I actually did not know anything that is in this course till about 10-15 years ago when I started looking into what was known about learning. And that was after having taught at the university level for >25 years! I wrote a book for the course to consolidate everything I found on learning from my researches and my now 39 years of teaching. I had to have the book ready when classes started, so I had to go the Kindle route. It is such an easy way to get a book published. I did buy ISBN numbers, which you actually do not have to do if just publishing a Kindle book. I also made up, and registered, a fictitious business name so it sounds like I actually have a publisher.
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On 8/7/2023 at 12:00 PM, Xerxes said:
My coffee cup
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9 hours ago, Spekulatius said:
LOL, sounds like a soap opera. People disappear in China all the time and most of the time they later reappear. I guess it depends on how the re- education goes.
I still don’t understand how this is particularly relevant.
Is the re-education like in the movie Total Recall?
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17 hours ago, boilermaker75 said:
Here is a video from a dash cam as a car is backing out and right at the end it is rear-ended. Who was at fault? Geico was the insurer for the car backing up and Farmers for the other car. I'm just curious what others think and then I'll later let you know the out come.
Edit: The speed limit is 10 mph in this garage and you can see the other car in the bottom right camera.
OK, Farmers claimed their client had the right-of-way coming down the ramp. Geico, my insurer, told me it wasn't my fault but they would not take Farmers to arbitration. They would instead pay the $6,000! $5,500 for repair and $1,000 in rental vehicle minus my $500 deductible.
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Here is a video from a dash cam as a car is backing out and right at the end it is rear-ended. Who was at fault? Geico was the insurer for the car backing up and Farmers for the other car. I'm just curious what others think and then I'll later let you know the out come.
Edit: The speed limit is 10 mph in this garage and you can see the other car in the bottom right camera.
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Small % cash; selling anything would result in a lot of taxes.
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3 hours ago, Sweet said:
I have part of my money in Schwab and I think they pay 0.45% which is a bit of a joke. If they don’t change that soon I’ll move it out to IBKR which is paying 10x more.Yet their margin rate for $0 -$24,999.99 is 13.250%!
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On 7/5/2023 at 12:55 PM, Spekulatius said:
Upthread it was stated that Wagner are more like pirates, but I think they are more like Privateers. Same job than pirates, but commissioned by the state/crown (British empire mostly).
Difference is that pirates work for their own, Mercenaries work for whoever pays most, but Privateers were private ventures who worked for the crown but used monetary incentives to wage war on the sea on enemy vessels. I am not sure that plausible deniability term existed back then, but I am sure the crown could not be reached for comments back then regarding this business either.
In France they were the Corsairs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_corsairs
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17 hours ago, Munger_Disciple said:
If you are selling naked calls & the stock gets put, you have to buy the underlying stock on margin & carry it forward with the associated debt + added risk. It seems like naked put writing isn't all that attractive with margin rates going up.
You mean naked put not call? I agree going on margin with the current margin rates is not something I am going to be doing.
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On 7/5/2023 at 1:09 PM, Munger_Disciple said:
@boilermaker75 If I understand your strategy correctly, you are writing short dated, cash secured puts on a few stocks like BAC, WFC & BRK. So you are effectively trying to earn a decent short term profit on idle cash in excess of ST T-Bills. If you get these stocks put to you, what do you do? Hold them (if so how long) or sell them immediately and take a loss?
@Munger_Disciple I never sell them to take a loss. I either keep them, or write covered calls. It is not only idle cash, which I usually don't have much as a percentage of my account, but also a small amount that is not cash secured. So I occasionally will go slightly on margin. Occurs about once or twice a year. With higher interest rates I have scaled back so that it is unlikely I will get margined. All my position, some I have held for decades, were entered by being put to.
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@gfp Exactly, only on companies I would not mind owning, or already own. If I don’t want to own the stock I am put to it is because it got me to a larger position than I wanted or put me on margin (always slightly). I then write covered calls till assigned.
@Dynamic Exactly, what I look for is about a 20% return and as short a duration as possible. Typically, 1 day to 4 weeks to expiration.
@Munger_Disciple. I am not picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. 99% of my put writing has been on a small universe of stocks, mainly BRK, WFC, and BAC. There are exceptions, risk arbitrage opportunities as Dynamic mentioned. During BRK’s purchase of BN I was writing a lot of puts on BN. During Sam Zell’s purchase of the Tribune CO I was writing a lot of puts on the Tribune. Recently I was writing a lot of puts on MSGE.
Edit:I think writing puts is the best way to do risk arbitrage because there is no timing uncertainty, you pick the expiration date..
@Blugolds11 That is the downside, not getting a position and the stock taking off. Surprisingly this has only happened to me once. Many years ago when MCD was trading in the $90-100 range I was trying to acquire some for LTBH. I made some put premiums but never got my position in MCD
Starship Test Launch Thursday
in General Discussion
Posted
We need more nuts like Elon.