It's not easy to argue with a legend, and Jim Cramer has certainly styled himself as such.

Certainly anybody has to respect his history as a money manager and at the very least listen to what he has to say, but there's a big difference between respect and brainless adulation. The latter is what you tend to see on TV spectacles like his "Mad Money Main Event" last week. The former is what I try to give each of his columns or suggestions.

So I read his Realmoney column entitled Brokerage Industry Misses a Big Chance (subscription required) with some interest and skepticism this morning. And, to borrow a headline he used to use himself, I think he's just plain wrong!

Why would anybody think that something so warm and fuzzy could be scary or bad luck???

Chez BTC is in lockdown. The black furry one is a bit of an escape artist, and while he's never gone past the edge of the driveway, there's still no way a black cat of mine is going to be wandering outside on Halloween weekend.

-btc

My lack of service experience has continued this week, to include my mom, again with Verizon, but this time for her landline service.

My brother and I changed some of her services for her last time we visited. We put her primary line on the Verizon Freedom plan, to get rid of about $80 in "legacy" long distance charges from AT&T every month. We also asked for their International choice plan, which for $3 per month, entitles her to cheaper long distance rates.

Of course, somehow the request to add the international plan got lost and Verizon tried to nail her with $1.68 per minute for a few calls to Israel. Confronted with two witnesses to the conversation -- me and my brother -- they agreed to credit her for the difference to the $.10 per minute "discount rate."

And it's no wonder people are fleeing to Skype, Vonage and all sorts of other alternate providers.

At Vonage, for only $24.99 per month, you get unlimited calls in the US and Canada, and without any need for complicated "international plans" you are given the "regular" rate to Israel of only $.05 per minute. Even after covering the cost of broadband from your cable provider, that's still a whole lot cheaper than Verizon's "Freedom" plan.

When mom moves, there'll be big changes. Verizon most likely won't be part of them, unless they decide to stop acting like a monopoly and provide the same simple, seamless service available through other alternatives.

-btc

On Sunday I met my visiting cousins and their families at Six Flags Magic Mountain, one of the three major theme park complexes in Southern California.

Now, I knew that Six Flags (NYSE: PKS) had put itself up for sale and that things might not be in the best of shape, but I was astounded at how bad the current management has let things get.

Huge swaths of the park are closed due to capital projects currently underway. Several major rides are closed, for no apparent reason. Many of the others are running at only partial capacity. On a somewhat chilly October weekend, lines were still so long that we decided to forgo several of the major attractions we had gone up there for in the first place.

As if that weren't enough, bathrooms were dirty with paper towels and toilet paper often nonexistent. The park itself is confusing and its map and signage don't help much. [Hint: A picture of a roller coaster on the map does not tell me where the entrance is!] The tilt-a-whirl was probably not unsafe, but the old paint and rust didn't inspire confidence. The staff milling about at many of the rides made me wonder if anybody was actually working. And the metal detectors and security sweeps at the entrance are a reminder from the very start that this place has been the scene of gang violence.

[They might solve this problem if they took a page from Disney's rulebook and simply excluded anybody who even looks like they're in gang colors, along with the variety of other miscreants in obscene t-shirts, etc., of which we saw plenty.]

I'm guessing much of the neglect comes from management's desire to make the numbers look better. Charge the same prices and cut back on service. Always good for a temporary earnings pop.

But if the grumbling in the lines is any indication, they're doing so at the cost of alienating many local customers, precisely the people who keep it going year-round. Maybe in other locations, where there aren't two alternatives in the same metro area, this could be acceptable. But here in SoCal the damage is being done, and whoever buys this thing is going to end up with a damaged brand name that will need an awful lot more than just operational restructuring to bring back.

My dad always used to say that we live in a so-called "service economy," with no service.

Can't think of better evidence of this than my past week.

Verizon, Part One

Friday afternoon my cellphone, along with several other items were stolen from my car. It was parked right in front of my brother's garage for a few minutes while I was unloading things and somebody walked onto the private property, went through it and disappeared.

[As an aside, is it any wonder that states are finding it easier and easier to pass legislation allowing their citizens to shoot anybody who even seems like a threat to life or property?]

Anyway, my Treo 600 -- which I never really liked -- was gone. As I'm not eligible for any kind of new phone until August and the deductible on my insurance is pretty high, I decided to go back to a simpler phone combined with my old Palm.

Cancelling my old phone was pretty easy. It was disconnected and the ESN permanently blacklisted within minutes of my discovering the theft. The guy at Verizon also offered me a simple Kyocera phone for about $90 as a replacement. I told him it would be easier for me to go to a Verizon store in the area and pick it up there, or maybe pay a bit more for a slightly nicer replacement.

I should have known better.

Not long ago I commented about the IT mess at Overstock.com and the qualifications of it's CIO.

It now seems he's disappeared on a "leave of absence" and that if he chooses to return it will not be in an IT capacity. If you believe the various posts floating around the internet -- including a missive by the CEO on one of the Motley Fool messageboards -- they'd like him to come back in some sort of marketing role.

Which is part of the problem which I was trying to illustrate in my previous discussion of this.

Whatever else this guy is, he isn't and wasn't an IT guy. IT is a tough job. To lead an IT organization -- particularly a project-focused one -- have to be a complete skeptic and usually a pessimist. You have to be the guy who is always saying "no," because there is a common term for CIOs who are optimists: Late and over budget.

To be effective in IT, it needs to be in your blood. You need to have a real desire to do it, to put in the hours, to make things work when by all reason they probably shouldn't, and to manage to stay in your job and avoid burning out even though you're always the guy who is saying "no." For most people, there are easier ways to make money.

Being a marketing or development guy is the exact opposite. You spend your entire life thinking about possibilities, not obstacles.

Sadly, "possibilities" guys sometimes get put in the job, because management decides they want a "can do" person in the role, not the usual obstructionist. Usually these kinds of appointments end in disaster, when the new optimist listens to some consultant or sales person, tells management that he "can do!" and falls flat on his face because of all the details he didn't bother to investigate before saying "can do!"

Seems that this is exactly what happened at Overstock.

The Orb Weaver

A very cool spider -- one of the many variants of Orb Weavers -- has moved in. Watching her build her web, then rebuild it in a more secure location after it was destroyed by an inattentive cat, was quite fascinating. She moved too quickly to really document the progress, but I've got dozens of photos of her "at work" in the center of the web, waiting.

Got me to thinking that Orb Weavers are probably great traders. My "new neighbor" carefully assessed the situation, built a web designed to optimally balance the risk of getting eaten by a passing bird against the benefit of catching a fly, then quietly sat there and waited for the bugs to come to her. When an unforseen risk (aka, the careless large black web-destroying feline) came along and literally knocked her out of her position, she re-assessed, rebuilt and is once again waiting for things to come to her. If only we could all be so patient rather than trying to chase every move.

By the way, if anybody has a better name than "Charlotte," please let me know.

Skepticism

"The market is quick to jump on companies that aren't showing growth. We haven't seen the abatement of skepticism. People are still feeling burned." -- John Landis of the FirstHand Technology Leaders Fund

And why is this bad? Arguably, we could have saved ourselves a whole lot of grief if a lot more people had been a lot more skeptical of a lot more pronouncements and unrealistic predictions made by tech companies and guys like Landis a few years ago.

Yes, it's easier to make money when everybody is brainwashed into buying haphazardly with no skepticism whatsoever. But navigating difficult markets and seeing through the BS is what guys like Landis are paid to do, right?

Stop complaining and do your job.

Nostalgia

A Carvel store opened up not far away from here. My brother and I grew up with Carvel ice cream. It was ubiquitous in the northeast and Tom Carvel's voice on his awful and amateurish commercials was a staple of kids' TV back in those days.

The brand almost completely disappeared in the 1990s, after the company was sold to Investcorp and Tom Carvel passed away. But apparently it's been revived and is now part of something called "Focus Brands," along with Cinnabon and Seattle's Best Coffee International.

So it was with a great sense of nostalgia and some skepticism that my brother and I headed over to the new store.

It was actually kind of weird. Rather than the too-tall counter and the utilitarian stainless steel that I remember from my youth, this place had the colorful look and feel of a Jamba Juice. And there were a bunch of gelato-style harder ice-creams and smoothies in addition to the soft-serve that made Carvel famous. And a much greater variety of branded and co-branded ice-cream cakes.

And two medium soft-serve cones were over $7.

Yes, that's more than my local Haagen Dazs or Ben and Jerry's charges for a cone.

I suspect that those prices are going to have to come down. There are too many other soft-serve and frozen yogurt type of places that are much, much cheaper. At those prices, my visits will be rare, which is something my waistline will thank me for.

I wish the couple who are running the place very well. It's no small thing to start up a franchise of your own, and especially one that is based on a nearly-defunct brand with unknown current acceptance or interest. But I think they'll have to adjust things a bit for the concept to work.

Snow

It's been snowing, and my mind is suddenly thinking about Utah. I was there just two weeks ago to enjoy the autumn colors and now they're quickly being covered by the first snowstorms of the season.

Guess it's time to wax up the skis for another year.

Sign Of The Times

I just visited a local Autozone (NYSE:AZO) store. While my disdain for this particular outfit has been discussed before, I did need a couple quarts of oil, a funnel and some fuel treatment for a portable generator I just bought, and they were close.

As I walked in the door, I noticed a sign advertising locking gas filler caps. "Don't Get Ripped Off! Protect Your Investment!" the sign demanded. Gasoline, the ultimate consumable commodity is now an "investment" that is prone to being stolen??? I don't think I've seen that sentiment since 1979.

Emergency Planning

Yes, as noted above I've just picked up a lightweight Yamaha generator at a nice sales price. I've been thinking about this for a while, but Katrina/Rita and a few other smaller disasters I've been involved in or aware of cemented the idea for me.

Hardly much of a generator -- it would be useless in a really hot/humid climate where air conditioning is a big deal, or in anyplace cold with electric heat. But in an emergency in this temperate climate, I'll be able to keep the refrigerator and some lights going and can cook on my little camp stove. It'll also be useful for those many times I want to take a set of photo strobes on location somewhere and don't have power for them. (More than likely, the latter will be the primary use.)

And no, I really don't believe that my government is really prepared to manage things in a disaster, though experience suggests that Los Angeles is far better prepared for a massive Earthquake than New Orleans was for even routine troubles.

Been Offline A Bit

The first anniversary of my dad's death was more emotional and draining that I had expected. Rather than getting a lot done in New York in the past week, I found the need for a lot of quiet down time and introspection. It didn't help that I ended up a bit sick for a couple of days.

Fortunately, I moved almost my entire trading account to cash last week. Might have been better to be short, but standing aside for the past few days was certainly not a bad place to be. My one small remaining position is a sliver of the Central Fund of Canada (AMEX:CEF) -- a gold and silver play which has worked out pretty well.

"Charity"

My brother has recently received three seperate mailings, "reminding" him that the anniversary of our dad's death was coming up, and -- by the way -- also suggesting that he might send a donation in dad's memory to these "thoughtful" institutions who so "kindly" sent out reminders of an event that we hardly needed to be reminded about.

Since my brother was the one who signed the medical examiner's paperwork identifying dad and he is also the only one to get such mailings, we suspect that these organizations just go through the public records and harvest names and addresses, then check against the funeral home/cemetery information to identify who might be Jewish.

All the "reminders" came from tax-exempt "religious institutions," mostly ultra-religious yeshivas in Brooklyn.

I'm hardly as down on charity in general as my friend Cody. To me, giving to a well-run charity is not all that different from helping a neighbor out when his house burns down or his car is stolen, it's just done on a larger scale for larger problems. But these parasites and all the others like them are hardly "charities" and not worthy of anybody's support. Frankly, they're just scum hiding behind a veneer of religious superiority. F*ck them.