is happily being the wheel rather than a rusty old spoke
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Pardon the off-topic intrusion, but wanted to write to you, Tom, and doing so publicly because the link may be of interest to other gearheads.
Two items:
1. My 08 STi has been easily the suckiest one of 4 of these things I've owned. Quite competent when it's working and despite softer springs and sways, it can hang with the older ones. But it's been a horrible experience: http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=24881446
2. Sorry to be asking on such short notice, but I've rented MidAmerica Motorplex September 6th and am inviting my best track buds to join me there. Cost is $100 each and we'll be running from noon until 2 hours after sundown. Passing in turns will be permitted (only between drivers who wish to be part of that -- we'll label the "don't pass in turns" cars) with point-bys.
The track will have a Fast Friday open track event the day before my event and a one-day Porsche DE the day after if you want to get in 3 days to make the trip more worth it.
It'd be cutting it REAL close, but the new long block for my Mustang (Dad money-shifted it last year) is in the bed of my truck and I'm hoping to get it running in time for this event, so if you want to attend but don't want to haul or drive a car that far, let me know and I'll keep you posted on the Mustang's progress and you can use it and I'll pick you up at the airport. Or you can do like our ad sales rep did last year and rent a Pontiac Grand Prix GXP at the airport and give us a surprisingly good run for the money. But, my Mustang es su Mustang.
A few months ago, I had planned to do this event then go straight up to RA where they're doing two events like the last time I was out there, and you would've heard from me asking to impose on your gracious hospitality again and company at the track (another good friend is going), but it's now probably too late to get into the RA events and I have little confidence the Subaru would survive a track that's nearly twice as long as MAM, with great elevation changes to boot.
I'll get squared away on cars soon and really am going to move heaven and earth to do RA and BIR next year, hopefully in a GOOD STi (should hit its governed 155 mph on either of those tracks -- 305 horses to work with and the 227-horse WRX was doing just over 125 at both tracks).
Oh, and the day before Subaru told me they'd reimburse me for my engine, I VERY nearly traded it in (at a paltry price because there are so many new ones still on lots) on a new Mustang Shelby Cobra GT500. The sole thing that held me back is a call to my lawyer who told me to not sell it under ANY circumstances because it'd be the equivalent of shredding documents. If I were going to take SOA to court (planned to at the time and don't know for sure yet that I won't), I have to still have the car for the defense to inspect. Otherwise it'd be spoliation, kinda like how they supposedly didn't do an OBD scan to see what the computer could say about what happened before removing my blown-up motor.
Let me know as soon as possible if you're interested in doing MAM and which of those dates and I'll also make sure to get you a room at Ameristar while I'm getting mine. Just keep in mind that I hope to have a spare and very good car you can use, but I might not. It all hinges on how long it takes me to swap out the long-block. I don't even have the old engine out yet. Just torn down enough to find out what's wrong with it. Missing and bent pushrods and valves that're stuck open are a clue and a half. <g>
I don't trust the Subaru for double-duty and it wouldn't be as fun if we're not on the track at the same time. And right now I'm really wishing I hadn't traded in my 07 STi (which was a perfect track car) on my 08 1-ton Chevy a few weeks ago. But without the truck, I couldn't have brought two cars anyway.
Let me die in my sleep like my uncle; not screaming like his passengers.
It usually seems to be the kiss of death when I publicly say that I like a particular stock, but I think I've publicly mentioned ACAS before with little ill effect at the time.
I own a lot of this in my pseudo-retirement (non-IRA, but the majority) account and usually own it in my trading account. I don't (but arguably should) do DRIP, but it sure felt good to check the accounts this morning and see the cash increases from ACAS's dividend.
Like someone else mentioned, I'm also considering using margin to buy more of it in the big account. With a dividend yield of about 18% based on today's price it's getting awfully attractive. What gives me pause is that the dividend is deep into "too good to be true" territory but countering that is that I'm not aware of any time that the dividend has done anything but go up. On one hand, few stocks whose dividends reach this level keep the dividend intact long-term but on the other, I can't find anything that looks like it could endanger this dividend.
I know I'll be buying more of the stock today but have no idea how much yet. I'll also likely take a rare dip into options here. Right now it doesn't cost much to buy the right to lock in the right to buy larger quantities that'll (most likely) yield 18%.
I thought when the price got low enough to bring the dividend yield up to 15%, the selling would stop. Wrong. The market obviously doesn't trust the dividend because if it did, this one's been in no-brainer territory for a long time.
Geez, if I were a day-trader, I sure would be tempted to unload the shares I just bought. But will just look at it as an especially juicy dividend.
While typing this, I've bought a little bit of stock but not options yet.
Let me die in my sleep like my uncle; not screaming like his passengers.
LOL! I won't go that far. I only want my due; nothing more.
Nice LT in your signature!
Someone's coming out tomorrow to look at my 05, which I'm trying to sell.
Well, another promise, which wasn't even an acceptable one in the first place, made and apparently broken. Will give it just a couple more days to make sure it's not being handled by mail and seeing a delay because of that.
I don't know about you guys, but I've never reached a person at this company when I call. I tried menu option 4 this time (after trying all the others) and got their PR firm.
Just wanted to let you know that we're very far through the process of getting pages and routines and procedures set up so that people can buy your excellent DVD through the site.
For those who have been waiting for the opportunity, I fully expect us to be flinging open the doors next week for you to get your hands on this DVD.
Holding back on saying anything for the moment. A fresh promise. And I'm the kind of guy that when a promise is made (to one of my associates; not me directly) and especially when a very short time-frame is put on it, I have to give the benefit of the doubt and an opportunity to honor or break the promise.
Whether it's honored or broken, I'll say so.
BTW, you're doing it again.
Hope INIX keeps the money
The last time I posted asking a few questions about INIX (change in ownership structure, etc) you bulled your way forward saying things about the company that I wasn't specifically saying.
And you're doing it again. People are asking me specifically if the situation is what they're suspecting it is and I really should just steer them to your posts where you're the one who's actually saying so.
Have a good weekend.
Well even if they did, not sure why they would open themselves up to libel.
Truth, by definition, isn't libelous.
I'm sure Bob and IHUB got a few skeletons
Meaning.... ?
Or is this the foundation for your earlier comment hoping we'd get shafted by a company you promote?
That kind of thing really doesn't reflect well on you as a promoter and reflects just as poorly on the companies you promote.
Your partner, Matt, usually sets an awfully good example you'd be well-served to emulate.
So true. They square up with me and I'll rush to publicly say so.
But so far it's been nothing but ignoring, empty promises, lack of common business courtesy/ethics, and now one of their paid promoters bashing me elsewhere and saying he hopes it never gets squared up.
Frankly, with that individual's conduct, I'd be surprised if they're able to land much in the way of decent accounts. The whole vinegar/honey thing.
And I might as well mention that I have ZERO problem with paid promoters when they disclose, so I've got no beef with Matt whatsoever and none with Steve on that particular issue.
It's not a matter of settling a score. And it's also not a matter of sitting on that kind of knowledge so you can make a profit.
It's a matter of sharing a relevant truth.
You might want to reconsider, as I'm planning to post some pretty ugly truth about this company on Monday. Though it sounds like it's already fairly common knowledge. All that's not known is the specifics and amounts.
Yeah, I suspect he meant to say Reverse Split.
I'm hoping not reverse merger as sometimes the obligations and liabilities of the "acquired" company go away and I don't want to see that happen.
Is it just me or is it really difficult to reach anyone on the phone there? I just tried calling the operator, got voicemail, then tried Billing, and got voicemail again.
Who is Drew Budhu? I've seen the name mentioned here a time or two as if he might be an executive. If that's the case, I'm not sure why he'd be the contact on accounts payable, but since we've had to escalate it to the executive level on this side, I guess he wouldn't be entirely the wrong person for me to be talking to.
Coincidentally (or not) I was recently asked exactly that same question via email by someone purporting to want to know the information in advance of discussing selling their own message-board site to us. I responded similarly and haven't heard back.
The question, as it was posed to me, was framed as a way of ensuring that we're the kind of company who would really take care of this other site's membership, though I couldn't see how the exact number of subscribers could possibly be considered evidence of that.
Feature Request:
Don't know why I didn't do this ages ago, as I've always wanted it.
In Favorite People, a "PM" link after "Remove | Reset" so you don't have to go to the profile to initiate a PM. Visible but a non-link for freebies. Rather not add the logic there to check if the bookmarked person is an Admin (who everyone can PM, premium or not) and freebies can still go to profiles to initiate Admin PM's.
Everyone, if you've got feedback or bug reports, please post them here or PM them to Meatloaf.
My inbox is full this morning of a few bug reports and a lot of opinion (positive and negative) and there are so many of them, I'm just having to forward them to the Meaty one.
More for everyone else's benefit than for your info, John.
I was getting the "Problems?" message when I tried to go to my Mailbox or reply to this post to tell you I was having problems and decided to click the "Clear Cookies" link and log in and see if it helped, and it did.
test
Actually, realtime throughout iHub (all Finance Channel pages and the mini-quote on the Board page) are already in place and a current high-priority project is making the upgrade to realtime a lot easier to get. You have to jump through some major hidden hoops right now, but in the near future it'll be as easy as a click or two on iHub.
Gotta tell you, dude, the caching is really cool! Running like a striped monkey even on satellite. Never seen it run this fast. And the db is yawning.
Can't wait to see how the db feels about it tomorrow.
Everyone,
Very soon (we're planning on tomorrow evening) we're moving to the new version of Investors Hub. Fortunately, unlike with the SI rollover years ago, we can roll back to the previous platform quickly and easily if we find that, for example, that the machines are getting overworked and not keeping up.
I often hear "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." and actually am an advocate of that philosophy, but this really does qualify for fixing. The site isn't broken in terms of being non-functional or even having bugs (at least the code on this side of the pond), but in the broader business sense, it's hobbled and this is a necessary repair.
The programming language we've been using was fine while it lasted (and the bottom line is that's what's changing most) but has not only started becoming a troublesome bottleneck that limits our traffic-handling capacity, it also presented a sizable brick wall when adding a lot of functionality we want to add to the site.
For those of you who speak binary, one of the biggest gains for us is the difference between an interpreted language and a compiled one.
For you non-binary types, if we use Favorites as an example, every time someone goes to that page (or it refreshes), the webserver has to read every single line of the hundreds of lines of code, check to see that it has the correct syntax, convert the line of code into "machine code", then do what that code tells it to do.
With the new language, Favorites is already machine code. The time-consuming steps of reading code line by line, checking for correct syntax, and converting to machine code (millions of times per day, mind you) are skipped because all of this is done one time rather than every time any user goes to the page.
This results in a fraction of the workload for the webservers and a large multiple of the number of pageviews and users the webservers can handle without slowing down. And actually should speed up page delivery for everyone, with the exception of dialup users (4.87% of our traffic) who will see a slowdown initially because of larger page sizes, but we'll later optimize the code to give it what we call "a smaller footprint".
There are also big benefits gained at the database server, as the data reader we can use for .NET is very specifically designed for our database server package, unlike the Classic ASP version which is more of a "one size fits all" data reader. This is actually an "it's nearly broke" item that the migration helps us with. The database server is currently dealing with nearly as much work as it can handle without slowing down. And why otherwise minor glitches or changes can bring it to its knees during market hours.
This migration to .NET increases the speed of the site and dramatically increases its ability to handle more traffic.
But that's not all it does. It gives us the ability to add features to the site that we simply couldn't previously.
And while we're in the middle of substantially rewriting the whole site, we're taking advantage of the ability to fix some design flaws and incorporate new features that would've required substantial rewrites to address anyway. If they were even possible in the old language.
Anyone who's been around here for any length of time knows that we're not a "change for change's sake" kind of company. We don't change what works unless we really feel we must or should, and changing to the .NET platform is a "must and should" item that's actually been pending for years but we're just now able to tackle.
And while the new site has been in Beta, Meatloaf and Dave have added lots of new features that were requested. Features we couldn't have had previously. This relative ease of adding features is a benefit we're already seeing.
Here's hoping for a successful transition!
Bob Z.
Everyone,
Very soon (we're planning on tomorrow evening) we're moving to the new version of Investors Hub. Fortunately, unlike with the SI rollover years ago, we can roll back to the previous platform quickly and easily if we find that, for example, that the machines are getting overworked and not keeping up.
I often hear "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." and actually am an advocate of that philosophy, but this really does qualify for fixing. The site isn't broken in terms of being non-functional or even having bugs (at least the code on this side of the pond), but in the broader business sense, it's hobbled and this is a necessary repair.
The programming language we've been using was fine while it lasted (and the bottom line is that's what's changing most) but has not only started becoming a troublesome bottleneck that limits our traffic-handling capacity, it also presented a sizable brick wall when adding a lot of functionality we want to add to the site.
For those of you who speak binary, one of the biggest gains for us is the difference between an interpreted language and a compiled one.
For you non-binary types, if we use Favorites as an example, every time someone goes to that page (or it refreshes), the webserver has to read every single line of the hundreds of lines of code, check to see that it has the correct syntax, convert the line of code into "machine code", then do what that code tells it to do.
With the new language, Favorites is already machine code. The time-consuming steps of reading code line by line, checking for correct syntax, and converting to machine code (millions of times per day, mind you) are skipped because all of this is done one time rather than every time any user goes to the page.
This results in a fraction of the workload for the webservers and a large multiple of the number of pageviews and users the webservers can handle without slowing down. And actually should speed up page delivery for everyone, with the exception of dialup users (4.87% of our traffic) who will see a slowdown initially because of larger page sizes, but we'll later optimize the code to give it what we call "a smaller footprint".
There are also big benefits gained at the database server, as the data reader we can use for .NET is very specifically designed for our database server package, unlike the Classic ASP version which is more of a "one size fits all" data reader. This is actually an "it's nearly broke" item that the migration helps us with. The database server is currently dealing with nearly as much work as it can handle without slowing down. And why otherwise minor glitches or changes can bring it to its knees during market hours.
This migration to .NET increases the speed of the site and dramatically increases its ability to handle more traffic.
But that's not all it does. It gives us the ability to add features to the site that we simply couldn't previously.
And while we're in the middle of substantially rewriting the whole site, we're taking advantage of the ability to fix some design flaws and incorporate new features that would've required substantial rewrites to address anyway. If they were even possible in the old language.
Anyone who's been around here for any length of time knows that we're not a "change for change's sake" kind of company. We don't change what works unless we really feel we must or should, and changing to the .NET platform is a "must and should" item that's actually been pending for years but we're just now able to tackle.
And while the new site has been in Beta, Meatloaf and Dave have added lots of new features that were requested. Features we couldn't have had previously. This relative ease of adding features is a benefit we're already seeing.
Here's hoping for a successful transition!
Bob Z.
test
edit test
I've emailed London asking if we're able to deliver delayed Level II for OTCBB.
I understand the realtime Level II has been whipped into shape and will be checking that out shortly.
Give me a sample Mutual Fund you're trying to get a quote for.
Nasdaq Mini Mar08: CME:ND\H08
S&P Mini: CME:ESF\Y ??? (Go to http://ih.advfn.com/p.php?pid=search and type S&P in the Name box, select "Chicago Mercantile Exchange" from the next box, and "Futures" from the last one and hit the Search button)
I'm not having much luck on the Dow eMini, but I know we have quotes and charts for Futures.
The SEC Filings are included in News since by most definitions they are. They're just not Press Releases. And it saves a click.
That was also discussed and, seriously, it was to save a few characters so we could use......... wait for it.........
a larger font.
Maybe make this an Option to have tabbed favorites or "Classic Style Favorites" where all are on a single page? That would be ideal for all :)
Actually, that's the plan, though it's not one we can implement very quickly.
Without getting too technical and boring (I can see Churak already nodding off), using tabs to create different Favorites pages is a LOT easier on the database server, and we need to first get the whole site transitioned to .NET, then we can assess the workload and see what it's going to take to put that huge load back on it without hurting performance or capacity. Which the Classic Favorites does very dramatically. I actually regret having made that an auto-refresh page because of all pages on the site, though it may seem relatively simple on the screen, it puts the most workload on the database server.
Once the whole site has been migrated (which will happen sooner than you think), we're going back through and looking at adding back in things we've taken away, including the granularity of user-configurability and the non-tabbed version of Favorites.
Edit: I don't know if this is common knowledge, but in the past when we've been bumping into the horsepower limit of our database server, I was able to speed things WAY up by simply cheating and taking whatever Favorites and Board refresh interval everyone had and doubling it.
I like the old quote chart. Had a level II tab that showed the MM's
I'm pretty sure that was quite some time ago that it would've had Level II, as nobody's allowed to give free Level II, even if it's delayed.
Correct me if I'm wrong on that, Matt.
recent stock trade amounts, time etc
Hit the "Trades" tab. I was a little unsure initially about it being called that rather than the "Time and Sales" I'm more used to, but it does take a lot less room and though it doesn't stand out as obviously being the same thing, you get used to it.
Also liked the 5-day,30-day and 3-month etc. quote charts.
We're going to be moving our way through all of the ADVFN-provided content and tweaking it to better suit our needs and charts is pretty high on the list. Specifically, being able to get other time-frames without going the Javascript route.
I occasionally hear complaints about the size we're now using as a standard for the site (1024x768) and wanted to point out that a tad more than 93% of our users are at that resolution or higher. 6.5% of our users are at 800x600 or lower and though that's not ideal for viewing this site anymore, it's functional.
Everyone,
When reporting bugs, it would make things a lot easier for us if you would post them on specific boards for specific kinds of bugs.
The difference that determines where a bug should be reported is pretty easy:
1. If "investorshub" is in the beginning of the URL, the Q&A board (#board-504) is best, especially if addressed to Meatloaf.
2. If "beta" is in the beginning of the URL, the Beta Feedback board (#board-9557) is the best bet, again, addressed to Meatloaf.
3. If the beginning of the URL is "ih.advfn.com", then it's something that needs to be addressed in London and the ADVFN Problems and Questions board (#board-8689) is the one you want.
Everyone,
When reporting bugs, it would make things a lot easier for us if you would post them on specific boards for specific kinds of bugs.
The difference that determines where a bug should be reported is pretty easy:
1. If "investorshub" is in the beginning of the URL, the Q&A board (#board-504) is best, especially if addressed to Meatloaf.
2. If "beta" is in the beginning of the URL, the Beta Feedback board (#board-9557) is the best bet, again, addressed to Meatloaf.
3. If the beginning of the URL is "ih.advfn.com", then it's something that needs to be addressed in London and the ADVFN Problems and Questions board (#board-8689) is the one you want.
Everyone,
When reporting bugs, it would make things a lot easier for us if you would post them on specific boards for specific kinds of bugs.
The difference that determines where a bug should be reported is pretty easy:
1. If "investorshub" is in the beginning of the URL, the Q&A board (#board-504) is best, especially if addressed to Meatloaf.
2. If "beta" is in the beginning of the URL, the Beta Feedback board (#board-9557) is the best bet, again, addressed to Meatloaf.
3. If the beginning of the URL is "ih.advfn.com", then it's something that needs to be addressed in London and the ADVFN Problems and Questions board (#board-8689) is the one you want.
Shouldn't be timeouts in public search anymore except they might be possible when selecting 2007 since the current version of SQL Server has a bug which requires me creating indexes the hard way and I haven't done it for 2007 yet.
The timespan actually has no impact on how long the search takes. Most of the time it takes (it's along the lines of 90%) is strictly a function of how large the underlying search table is.
It's a real brain-dead part of SQL Server that I hope eventually gets fixed. If you want to find all the messages written in March that have the word "moon", it first finds ALL messages containing the word "moon", then narrows it down to March.
It's much better in SQL Server 2005 (our current version) than it was in SQL Server 2000, but it's still brain-dead. And really hurts on systems this large.
Thanks. A reminder for you when you get a chance. I *think* I made all the necessary changes in search, msgsearch, adv_search, adv_search_results and msgsearchbyboard, but haven't published throughout dev yet and you might want to give it a once-over.
2007 is now a separate search table and current search is 2008.
Can you kill the blurb? I'm done killing the db and can't find the blurb in the code.
I'll have to do this a different way or do it later at night. Even in increments of 100k it's taking too long and keeping the frequently-used search table locked up too long.
I'm trying to move the data in smaller (half a million) increments, but will go ahead and do it 100k at a time, which should relieve the load on the server.
I told it to stop the query that was running and it hasn't stopped yet. Probably unwinding what it's done so far. Testing to see if it's working better now.
Because a previous search got the necessary data into the cache.
The current-year table has gotten too big because it still includes all of 2007. I'm working on that right now.