atomic_fungus (atomic_fungus) wrote,
atomic_fungus
atomic_fungus

#2848: Well, it went up a little bit

The Dow dropped to 11,139 today before rising again to close at 11444, so it's actually up about 66 points over close-of-business yesterday.

It's still off 500 points from the beginning of the week, and some 1,000 points from about 10 days ago or so.

Boortz has some discussion of the issue here.

The jobs report for July was better than a lot of us had feared it would be. The unemployment rate remains unchanged; but the not-negative news was probably enough to give Wall Street a little bit of a bounce today.

The other factor being, of course, that the market can only handle so much selling before buying begins again. If you look at how the stock markets work you rapidly learn that large moves are rarely single-day events, and they're rarely monotonous: they go up and down over the course of several days and the important thing to be mindful of is the trend.

The fact that the Dow closed up for the day does not mean the plunge is over, though it might be. It's a chaotic system and unless there's some good news over the weekend I expect the market could go either way on Monday morning.

Some folks are warning us to brace for an economic crash and a real shootin' war. We are in fact overdue for a big shootin' war, if you think about it; it used to be that there were big wars about every 30 or 40 years or so, and we haven't had a big one since 1945. Thanks to the invention of nuclear weapons, we damn well knew we couldn't afford to have one, not when we can bomb whole cities out of existence with a push of a button. Sadly, today's world contains a lot of crazy mofos who don't give a rat's ass about human life.

I'm hoping that war--should it come--will be fought with tanks and guns rather than nuclear warheads. And that it'll be fought somewhere far from here.

* * *

So last night I did an online search and discovered that I could buy an RJ-45 crimper, a network cable tester, and a bag of 50 cable ends for the princely sum of $22.58. Amazon.com. So I ended up placing the order, because--WTF--I'm tired of having this ethernet cable running down the hallway. God knows if Og will even bother coming back from Canada; he sounds like he's having a grand old time up there--and if he doesn't come back, how can I borrow his crimper from him again?

(I admit that he'd probably retreat from Canuckistan to the northern border of the US--perhaps Wisconsin or Michigan--since Canada is pretty far removed, politically, from Og's preferred mode of existence. But those places are still not here, and who could blame him?)

The other thing I did was to check out OfficeMax's web site for office chairs, to see if there was anything I might like.

Reason: my damn back hurts. I spend most of my waking time at the computer these days; if I'm not blogging or writing, I'm playing WoW--and the chair I'm sitting in is not comfortable. I have to take a pillow and stuff it behind my lumbar spine to support it. If I want the back of the chair to support me, I end up in a semi-reclining position. That's fine for some things--like Solitaire or writing in Word--but not for WoW or blogging. The padding on this chair has effectively died, too, so after I've sat in it for an hour or so it starts feeling hard.

Well: I bought this chair in 2000, if I am recalling correctly; maybe 2001. So it's been around the block a few times and it might be about time to retire it. Especially since it's making my back hurt, damn it.

OfficeMax's web site had quite a nice chair that fell within my price range and which wasn't upholstered with leather.

Look: if I were buying a chair for a for-real work-type office where I would never be wearing shorts, leather would be "okay". (I still prefer cloth.) But I'm buying a chair for home, where I might be wearing shorts or underwear when I sit down to check my e-mail, and leather sticks to your skin. Now imagine me sitting at my desk on a warm summer night when I don't want to run the AC too much, and it's 80° in my room and I'm sweating, and when I get up for a bathroom break the chair remains stuck to me, and I have to call the Fire Department to get myself unstuck.

Yeah, that's just no good. No thank you.

That's the same reason I don't want a car with leather upholstery. Yeah, I get that it's "upscale" and fancy and all; no, I don't like it. I grew up in the 1970s, when most cars came with vinyl upholstery, and cloth seats were optional. It was remarkable when--in 1975--Dad bought a car that had cloth upholstery. And vinyl was sticky in summer, besides feeling griddle-hot after basking in the sun for even half an hour; and in winter it was hard and frigid until it had absorbed enough heat from your butt to defrost. Cloth is none of that.

Leather--I had a 1993 Thunderbird with "leather-trimmed" seats. That means that the seating surfaces were cloth but the side bolsters (for example) were covered in leather. And in summer the leather was griddle-hot and in winter it was ice-cold. Just like vinyl.

...so give me cloth, please, rather than leather or vinyl. I don't care if it's not "in"; I care about having a comfortable place to sit.

But I don't want just to order the chair from OfficeMax's web site; I'd rather go have a gander at what they've got in stock and see if I can try it out. I don't know if I can get the same price in-store as on the web site, nor do I know if I can even see the chair in-store, but WTF--I need to get out of the house more, anyway.

* * *

Okay, WTF, cats?

Yesterday I gave my cats their evening can of food, as usual; and as usual I looked out the back door to see if the outdoor cat, "Brother", was there. He was. ("Brother" is the name Mom gave him.)

And he had a friend.

The new cat was a grey one, looking perhaps 6-8 months old--not big enough to be fully grown, but too big to be a kitten. It ran when I came out to put down the plate of food, but not far; Brother barely walked away before turning around and gazing at me with an expression that said, "I'm only moving away from you on general principles."

As for the other cat, Brother didn't mind him at all. He walked up to the dish and started eating, and seeing Brother eat, the grey cat moved up and started eating, too.

Now, here's the deal: Brother's a male cat. Male cats don't tolerate kittens well, not even their own kittens. I'm told that a male cat will kill his own kittens if he gets into the den before they're weaned--and I don't know why, so don't ask. All I know is, everything I know about cats tells me that this adult male cat should not be allowing a younger cat (male or female) to horn in on his dinner.

Yet there it was, large as life.

An adult male cat will allow a littermate to share his food; he'll share his food with his mother. But all others will normally be sent packing. As predators, cats have territory and they mark it and defend it. Even if his own progeny show up, he won't let them hang around.

So why this grey cat is getting away with it, I don't know.

* * *

Monday is when the motorcycle riding course I wish to attend begins. There are classes at 8, 12:30, and 5; I'm hoping that as a walk-in I'll manage to get a seat in one of them. We'll see!

* * *

Bleah, I'm still suffering from a total lack of motivation.
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