Had a few good wines this week, though nothing special in the food department. Next week I'll be in Utah for a few days over my birthday, where among other things I hope to finally meet Nigel, then on to New York for a week of helping mom get set for her move and to see an old Israeli friend who will be in town with his family. It's also been hot and I haven't had that much of an appetite. And the market has been rather painful, so I've had even less of an appetitie, but a definite desire to drink. More about that tomorrow.

So wines for the week are:

I thought I'd start a new feature, to highlight what I've been eating or drinking the past week. I'll compile throughout the week and post on Saturdays, travel and personal life permitting.

With my brother's move to new quarters in full swing, there's been a lot of heavy lifting and a lot of quick meals on the go, so no elaborate discussions of mixing food and wine this week. Just a few nice ones on a couple of quiet afternoons, and evenings after the work is done.

• Last week's action in the markets cannot be ignored, even after two days of basically doing nothing. The breakout in every major index other than the Russel 2000 has to be bought, though I'm respecting the action in the Russel enough to keep my risk defined. Playing big cap names and indexes including the SPX and SOX, mostly with August and September calls at or near the money. I would not be shocked if this rally fails, but believe that for now the path of least resistance is up.
• That said, today's "new record" in the Dow is pretty meaningless, seeing as it comes amid lousy breadth and non-participation by other indicies. Typical consolidation with little to no significance.
• I believe that there are still major problems beneath the surface, but also believe that all political will be mustered to keep things from blowing up before November of next year.
• Drinking a glass of Little Black Dress Pinot Grigio, which is not all that bad for a vanity marketing label. It bills itself as "the wine that is the perfect accessory to any “dressed up” or “dressed down” occasion. Offering a Merlot, Chardonnay, and Pinot Grigio – all from California – Little Black Dress Wines are the “go-to” wine designed for the 34+ million female wine drinkers in the United States.". I'm sure that this sexist marketing ploy will leave Pinot Grigio fan Aspeth seething and seeking revenge, but it is actually pretty good wine despite the condescending attitude. Besides, I'm sure Aspeth looks great in a little black dress.
• With the wine tonight, lightly marinaded swordfish on the grill, accompanied by grilled summer squash.
• Got myself a cricopharyngeal spasm, also known as globus hystericus, which is a somewhat uncomfortable tightness of the throat. I've had one of these before and it does resolve, but in the meantime it's annoying. Some wine or other forms of relaxation do tend to help as it's basically a muscle problem, so expect more wine-related comments. This development will call for a change of pillows, among other things. My new ones have been stressing my neck a bit more than I expected and probably have something to do with the problem.
• The source of new pillows? Definitely Bed Bath and Beyond (NasdaqGS:BBBY)! These guys make a practice of sending me 20%-off coupons roughly every two weeks. I have always wondered how they expect to make money, but have recently noticed that every time I go in there for my one "20% off" item, I end up buying half a dozen things that I didn't realize I needed at full price. Fantastic merchandisers.

I thought I'd comment on wines for a change, and maybe start doing so a bit more regularly.

A few things have prompted this. Recently, I've removed from storage about 20 cases of wine that has been mostly untouched for the past decade. A lot of these are sadly well past their prime. I'll probably end up tossing at least a third of these. Even good quality red zinfandels just don't last that long, and those comprised a good chunk of what was in storage. Still, there's hope for lots of it, and some of those 20 year old Cabs, Bordeaux and Burgundies are looking pretty good. Anybody for a tasting of '86 and '87 Beringer Reserves, Opus One and Caymus Special Selection? Anybody? You know who you are.

I also recently participated in a discussion about Aspeth's choices in summer wines and it got me thinking about what I really like this time of year. The honest truth is that I've been quite out of touch with wines in recently -- just too may other thing have been more important -- so this is a first for a while.

In the end, I did a bit of shopping at my local supermarket this evening and thought I'd contribute a few ideas of my own.

Being a black cat on Friday the 13th can't possibly feel all that good.

I've been keeping a close eye on the fluffy one today, because along with Haloween, Friday the 13th is a date when the place goes into lockdown due to the nasty things that some evil people do to cats (and especially black ones) that are unfortunate enough to be found outside on these dates.

Fortunately, the big black furball took it all in stride. He's been lazy all day, alternating betwen his favorite green chair upstairs and one of my keyboards downstairs.

Time for a Snooze.

And yes, he has become a bit of a redhead...

Somebody is finally taking my advice.

About eight years ago I was working for a major PC manufacturer, doing analysis on customer support patterns and costs. The results I came up with were not surprising. 80% of our support costs were due to about 20% of our customers. And worst 1% were almost 30% of the total cost. For the most part, these were not people whose PCs were not working properly. Many of them were people who just did not want to be bothered with learning, who would call in to ask the same questions about basic operations day after day. Some of them felt that our customer service people were there to provide free tutorials for hours each week. A few of them -- like a priest in a remote parish who called us 3-4 times a day -- were clearly just lonely and looking for somebody to talk to.

At the time I had other suggestions too. It was pretty easy to identify that the biggest problem customers tended to have purchased their products from certain retailers, and usually at certain times of the year. So I recommendded, among other thing, that we reconsider doing things like day-after-Thanksgiving specials at Wal-Mart, or at the very least do some further analysis, to attempt to determine if the long-term value of the new customers acquired could ever justify the cost of getting them up to speed on their intitial purchases, and whether in fact they ever would come up to speed and be satisfied with the product.

For those people who were truly at the extreme -- the ones who were five or six standard deviations away from the norm -- my recommendation was simple: Repurchase their PCs and all accessories from them at the original MSRP (probably less than they paid at retail), and even provide them an extra $100 gift card which they could use to buy a competing product. Getting rid of that small number of people would be worth the money.

So yesterday's news about Sprint Wireless did not surprise me in the least.

It was a lazy, hazy Fourth in my part of the world. After several days of nonstop sun, the coastal overcast hit with a vengence, just in time to ruin everybody's beach day and ensure that half the fireworks in Marina Del Rey exploded inside the clouds and out of view.

But other than the reactions to occasional explosions outside, the cats took it all in stride.

The formally dressed one lounged around on the patio for much of the day. Strangely enough she couldn't even be bothered watching the resident birds.

While the big black furball hung around and eyed birds and squirrels while guarding the patio door. Good to have him there in case an army of terrorist meese, uh mouses, make that mices, should decide to ruin the holiday by invading the premises.

Sirius Pops provided all-American compositions throughout the day. A BBQ'd steak with leftover scraps for the feline population concluded the evening.

-btc

• This will probably be the thinnest market all year, so I'm doing very little other than watch a few long positions run.
• Jeff Matthews has written a great piece in which he explains exactly how the Fed comes up with those unbelievable "statements" every month:

  Chairman: “Last month we said ‘economic growth was moderating.’ We have a motion before us to replace ‘moderating’ with ‘slowing.’ The motion has been seconded. The floor is open for discussion.”

  1st Board Member: “Why ‘moderating’? Why not ‘slowing.’? I liked ‘slowing.’”

  2nd Board Member: “I prefer‘moderating.’ We haven’t used it in a while.”

  1st Board Member: “Well I don’t care for it. How about ‘restrained’?”

  3rd Board Member: “Why ‘restrained’?”

  2nd Board Member: “Because we’ve never used ‘restrained’ and I’ve always wanted to use ‘restrained.’ (He lapses into a reverie, as if quoting from a book.) ‘She restrained herself as his strong hands grasped her heaving shoulders—’”

  And it gets better.



• David Miller, whose work at Biotech Stock Research was mentioned here yesterday, flagged CombinatoRX (NasdaqGM:CRXX) several months ago. Now the New York Times has the story. Nice call.

-btc

Still can't stay away from the Casey Serin debacle, which is perhaps the most compelling train wreck I've ever seen. Either that or it's the most elaborate troll in the history of the internet.

As I was reading Barry Ritholz' great piece comparing Enron and CDO hedge funds, I couldn't help running the same comparisons with Casey. Please refer to Barry's piece to follow along:

Wrath of the RHIGF

I spent my day snaking hairballs out of my shower drain.

The drain has become progressively worse and worse since my Raven Haired Italian Girl Friend (RHITF) stayed here a while back.

I believe I have now completely cleaned out all the long strands of raven-colored hair from the drain, and I can shower without quickly standing in dirty water up to my ankles.

Still, sort of miss having her here, though a recent shorter-haired visitor of Czech origin has made up for the company. Too bad she's returned home too.

Israel Passport Update

Well, I got the document as discussed the other day. But apparently only good for one year. It seems that the US government has been concerned about foreign nationals arriving here, "losing" their passports, and then getting new ones in an effort to avoid anybody noticing that they stayed far longer than their tourist visas permitted. This avoids their being blacklisted for future travel. In most cases passports are not even renewed: the person is usually given a one-way transit document good for only a few months and allowing the holder to go home.

I was allowed to get an actual passport because my old one which was issued in 1973 was "lost" so long ago and because there's no question of my legal status in the US. Still, at the US government's insistence, I can only get a 1 year document after reporting a loss. In six months I can go back and request that it be extended out for an additional nine years, upon proof of being here legally, which I already provided.

Yet another example of our Department of Homeland Security generating lots of rules and "action" with no real results.

Weekend Cat Update

The RHIGF is the source of only one type of problem hair this week. With the recent increase in temps, shedding activity has increased significantly. Time for some serious grooming.

Panorama Photo Update

Got myself this neat little device from Really Right Stuff, who make some of the coolest camera-support equipment available. I've calibrated it and did some experiments, and it's pretty fantastic. Don't have any really worthy images, but look for some soon. My 20mm lens seems to be just about perfect for panoramas on the digital Nikon.

iPhone Mania

My own take on this is that it'll open up the smartphone market for consumers in a way that it has never been open before. That said, as Kevin Wassong notes, it's not a device for my mom, and in truth is overkill for my needs too.

But it's not going to displace the BlackBerries in the business market until things like integration with enterprise email servers are worked out, and possibly not even then. I have not had good results with touch-screen keyboards of any size in the past and am somewhat skeptical of the reviews claiming that it's not an issue. Maybe not for casual consumer web surfing, but has a real crackberry addict tried it and liked it?

The Death of Biotech and Pharma

David Miller of Biotech Stock Research points out in this month's newsletter that it is quite possible that biotech and pharma, along with much of health care, is likely to become uninvestible in the coming years. Copyrighted stuff, so can only give tidbits here. Justifications for this are mostly political: in addition to the liklihood of more regulation and price controls, the FDA has come under so much political pressure to avoid approving drugs with risks, that the liklihood of approval has been signficiantly reduced, the liklihood of approval subject to ongoing re-evaluation much increased, and thus the costs of bringing something to market increased signficantly. At this point a drug that experiences significant side-effects in only 1% of the people who take it is being questioned. That type of scrutiny would have kept lots of current drugs off the market. It is a big deal.

He forecasts that in coming years, we'll see a move away from drugs that work for everybody and towards solutions that integrate genetic testing of the potential patient, with a selection of drugs that are uniquely suited to that patient. From my perspective, the problems with this will continue to be political. What if you come up with a drug that works well only with people whose "genetic identifier" includes the gene for blue eyes or low-skin pigmentation? Think the polticians won't intervene against a "racist" cure, even if grounded in good science?

Summer Travel

It looks like this summer's travel will be mostly related to my mom's upcoming move. While my brother and I are happy to finally see this happen, an August move in Manhattan is not sounding like fun.

Perhaps I'll manage to squeeze in a quick birthday trip to the mountains.

-btc