Holidays

Well December is running its course yet again.

The cold has set in and it's dipped into the 30s a couple of times over the last month. And it froze once.

I had a quiet birthday here just watching movies. I stopped at HEB after work on Tuesday and picked up a bottle of champagne for the evening. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were my birthday date. I watched the original trilogy while it rained :)

The week itself was busy up at work. New employees, new clients and new tools made for a six day work week.

This morning I slept in and made up for a generally fast-paced week. I've been too wimpy to get out and ride my bike in the cold weather so I've been doing what I can when I can to keep the blood moving.

Last night, my sister and mother and I went out to dinner at Tres Amigos. We went pretty early so it was filled with what my mother referred to as "blue-hairs." But that didn't make the food any less enjoyable. It still is, in my opinion, the best Mexican food in Austin. The margaritas weren't bad, either :D

My sister filled us in on the growth her company has seen this year and what they're expecting next year. Her feet really haven't touched the ground over the last couple years just due to the demands of the job.

My mother found a new place to live and I'll be helping her move over the course of the next few weeks. She'll be up on the North side of town, about 20m away, living very close to her aunt and uncle. It'll be good for her.

Christmas is coming up and I'm working through it. I have the week after Christmas off and I don't have anything to do, yet. I think I'll stick around here and sort some things out. I wonder if putting more planning into a number of New Year's resolutions will have any bearing on my level of commitment through the year. I'm optimistic, but we'll have to see.

So far on the list:

meditate regularly
comfortable pancake
press to handstand
muscle-up on the rings
comfortable in L-sit
eat better
write songs
French and Italian
grow trading account
continue to blog
get back into CAD
continue to cycle

That's the short list. I'm going to brainstorm on my week off and try to devise a full-fledged schedule. I might have to remove myself from JTV and just watch movies the weekends. But that's not particularly something I want to do. I'll have a look into the misty future and see what seems reasonable.

Things are quiet here. Movies and guitar are keeping me busy. And I'm just sorta counting the days until my week off. I've thought some about trading but it's been good just keeping the charts closed for an extended period of time. I have no idea what's happening in the news and I'm really, really okay with it.

Earlier in the week, I sent my sister a couple out-of-print books from books.google.com. I told her I didn't NEED anything for my birthday but if she felt so inclined, I'd love to have a hard copy of them. Coming in at just under 1,300 pages, I told her not to stress if she couldn't do it... but she totally said she would! :D If you haven't met her, Audrey is awesome.

At the moment, chestnuts are in the oven and the whole house smells amazing. The lights are on in the oak trees across the street and the cold air is tryin to get through the cracks of the door frame :)

>>"Miserere" by Gergorio Allegri, performed by King's College choir

Periodicals

Oh the news, the news. What was in the news today? It's been an interesting few hours.

*An especially strong, mentally challenged man launched an entire cathedral at Silvio Berlusconi's face. Terrible.

* The number of medical marijuana facilities in Los Angeles County just surpassed the number of Starbucks and McDonald's franchises combined. This is awesome. I don't care where you fall in the argument about MM. Pot is, hands down, better for Californians' health than both Starbucks and McDonald's combined.

* Twenty-two million emails from the Bush administration were recovered in an effort by two groups to sort out what actually took place over the course of 33 especially crucial days a few years back. In related news, a personal assistant to former vice-president Dick Cheney was inexplicably shot in the face with a shotgun after he informed Cheney that the "Delete" function just sends files to the Recycle Bin in Windows and doesn't actually delete anything.

* The main index in Dubai jumped about 10% on news that Dubai World is getting bailed out by Abu Dhabi. It turns out someone actually still sees value in the world's most difficult fucking golf course.

Things are generally quiet here. I haven't opened a trading chart in over 48 hours and it feels gooOOOOooood. It's like I'm on vacation. Since going live again on Nov 12, I've posted 25.3%. Now I'm on human leave, no longer a slave to teh charts until the new year.

If you're in a Pacific country, you've been celebrating my birthday for about 10 hours. If you're in western Europe, you've been getting crazy for about 2. And if you're in the states, you're probably just sitting around, holding your breath and counting down the minutes with your champagne bottles in-hand.

I just slammed a preemptive, celebratory bowl of macaroni. And I haven't a thing to do all night. This is ridiculous. It's awesome. I feel like a kid again and might go build a fort. I might actually... read...???

I stopped by Whole Foods on Saturday and got a couple bags of chestnuts. I made a meal out of them on Saturday afternoon and might cook some later tonight. Otherwise, I might just do Key Lime Pie. These are the hardest decisions I make over the course of any single day. Failing printers, data backup and system stability come in a distant second to key lime pie.

>>No music. Quiet.

Topsy-turvy

I played guitar for a long time last night after trading and it came out well. My walls are the best audience in the world. There are no people screaming, there are no set times or house sound systems to mess with and the venue doesn't smell like old beer and feet. It's absolutely brilliant.

This week has been very productive. I got home from work last night and fired up the computing devices. When I updated my spreadsheet I found out that there was a pretty hellacious spike/failure in the history data for AUDCAD that was throwing my whole market overview off. I don't usually like being without the overview. For a long time, trusting my gut was synonymous with paying some guy I'd never met for no good reason. But the times, they are a changin.

GBPJPY had ripped 2.39% the day before and it just went sideways. Like I said before, gj doesn't generally stay in one place for too long. It completely bottomed out at the end of the day on Monday and nobody wanted to touch it. It had been consolidating when I got home and had been going sideways for about 14 hours. I was looking for a short.

I was a bit weary of the shorts yesterday because there's always a possibility of gj moving the same amount of space in the opposite direction in the same amount of time. I call them "V-days." A candle cracked down on the 15m and I was short. It dumped right after I entered (always a good sign) and I just held it for four or five minutes. The strength of the dumping price convinced me it was at least good for the next 20 pips. +20 pips exactly.

I didn't get a chance to look at the charts all day today and I was anticipating something sideways. It didn't go sideways. GBPJPY ended up bouncing off the 32ma a couple times on the hourly chart and it printed a sturdy bullish divergence on MACD going into Asian open. I entered long after the second quick retrace on the hourly. My MACD is a pretty strong indicator used in conjuction with other indies and a bit of emotional oversight. The pair printed a pretty unconvincing bearish 15m candle and I entered long rather ambitiously with a quarter of my position. It floundered around and the lingering short-sellers tried in vain to get away from the resistance above. After about 10 minutes, the price completely ripped to the topside. It went about 30 pips in 60 seconds. I'll be honest. I was laughing at the other guy. I've taken enough beatings to know when it's okay to find unrestricted joy in winning. I entered the rest of my position and closed both when the momentum went out. The trade made just over 4% in about 45m in the market.

I told myself I was gonna take less risk going into Christmas, but I lied. The market is showing no signs of erratic behavior yet. I'm full-on through the end of this week. I'll be off from trading from Friday afternoon until January 10th... just looking over charts and sharpening my throwing spears.

Last night, after my trade and before the guitar, I made paralettes on the porch. I used them for the first time tonight and they work (painfully) well. I will be moving slowly tomorrow.

Hope all's well.

>>"Help I'm Alive" (Acoustic) on Fantasies by Metric

Short

It was a mind numbing day at work. I don't even know if I listened to music today. I think I did. But the level of Bizarre was intense coming through the phone I don't know what was happening in the other ear. I blacked out. I'm here now and just remember driving home and eating an amazing bowl of macaroni.

I got home and fired up my machines with a vengeance. I took a trade yesterday on GJ open to close the gap from the weekend. It didn't close the gap. It tried but couldn't break the trendline on the daily chart. I closed out before it turned significantly, but I ultimately lost. Sundays are only allowed 25% of standard exposure because they can be a whirlpool of low volume, indecision and/or general inconsistency.

Today, GJ sank a bit in London and completely went sideways... completely sideways through most of London and all of New York. It usually doesn't bottom out like that after a big gain unless it's retracing. When I saw gj dipping down to correct NFP from Friday, I took it quickly. I waited for an exhausted candle to press down against the bottom and went short. The four hour chart suggested downward pressure and it looked like it could reach the 50% and perhaps the 38.2% fib line from the bottom in January. That's what it did. It broke down within 30 seconds of my entry and then it just sorta floundered down to the 50 line. It made it there pretty quickly, all things considered, so I let it test to see if it wanted to rip to the 38.2. It bounced a couple times and I got out when momentum died.


It did finally dip down to the 38.2. But a quick victory is the best victory. I got upside down for about 30 afterwards and then passed out with the dog in the living room in an exhausted stupor.

I'm going to crash now because tomorrow will be another whirlwind. I might leave Son House on through the night. I think I will.

>>"Preachin Blues" on The Father of the Delta Blues 1965 by Son House

Sorted

If the mind moves the body, the body must move the mind. Yoga practitioners believe when a person's right nasal passage is open and the left is closed, the mind is encouraging a healing condition. When the right passage is closed and the left is open, this is a sign that the brain needs some additional degree of raw power or energy. Power and healing. When both passageways are open, the mind is said to be comfortable with the tasks in front of it.

It probably seems like I've been overtaken by some ephemeral sentiment. And I have. I just spent an hour stretching and then about twenty minutes balancing. I usually end up on my head like that once a month or every other month. And now my eyes are comfortably watery and I'm just a little more willing to laugh.

While upside down, I felt the fissures in my skull bend and contort to comply with my changing center of gravity. Feeling the blood move around the sides of the brain is a brilliant sensation. And while upside down, I noticed something I consider to be exciting. I noticed muscles I forgot I had. They're the muscles that were buried deeper and deeper every time I picked up a pencil or a pen growing up. They were buried by the notion that a person is able to do any single thing better with one hand than the other. This is a strange thought indeed.

Physical balance requires physical equilibrium. With a body, the lines of reflection most often used when balancing are the spine and the waist. I noticed today that the neck muscles connecting to the skull were actually sending messages down to my shoulders looking for balance. This blew my mind. I was in awe of the different body systems and needed to google some muscles. So when I saw that basically the only muscles working to this end were the left and right trapezius muscles, I was less astounded... but not by much. Ultimately, I'm reminded yet again of the disservice done to our youths by imposing some formal, muscular bias just for ease. So what if it takes 6 more weeks to learn to write with either hand? I think it's worth it when compared to a lifetime of muscular imbalance, uncertainty and perhaps even general incoordination. What a terrible idea. I suppose being able to write is a step in the right direction, but that's what came to mind this evening.

So it's been a slow and cold weekend. It snowed around Central Texas on Friday night but I didn't see any of it. I tried to sleep as long as possible to see if I could sleep through the winter. I was unsuccessful.

It's been in the 30s and 40s and sunny and windy... very cold. Too damn cold for me. I've stayed inside almost entirely bundled up with a jacket on. I feel sorry for the clothes drying out back. So cold.

I watched falscher die (The Counterfeiters) last night and I was surprised. I really enjoyed it. I recommend it if you haven't seen it. This afternoon I watched Across the Universe and considered again the brilliance of the writing style of those incredible insects, the Beatles. Why is it that with so many people, so many hours and days of sitting around and battling our battles, there are seemingly less than a handful of folks in history who have ever been able to come to peace with their minds and convey those emotions to other people? It's beyond me. More people need to sing. Maybe that's the problem. So it's not so much that not many are perhaps enlightened or unable able to convey their emotions. It's just that it unfortunately takes much more than that in the minds of most.

So many people are just endlessly intimidated by the modern day entertainment industry which, more often than not, resembles more of an artistic landfill than anything else. The notion of establishing oneself as a professional artist and the difficulty implied therein is comparable only to the regard in which most people typically hold their favorite celebrities. It's bizarre.

My speakers are currently embroiled in an epic battle against my housemate's drumset. And I'm totally winning. Brother Ali just sorta walks on top of other sounds by nature. It's what he does... can't stop him.

I'm about to go to the grocery store before my week starts. There are more beautiful women per square foot at HEB at Oltorf and Congress than anywhere else in Austin. This unfortunately doesn't imply that I have a damn thing in common with any one of them, but... here's to hoping. My social life anymore consists of going to HEB and buying food.

But seriously... give me a break... headphones + aisles of food + attractive women? That's recreation enough for me :D

>>"Begin Here" on The Truth is Here by Brother Ali

Winter made it to Texas.

I don't remember when I posted last, but I can imagine it was a while ago.

I pretty much convinced myself that my PC had a failed motherboard. Something must have been wrong with the power system somewhere because it's killed three hard drives this year and I barely scraped data off of the fourth. It was pretty demoralizing.

So I got a new one.

I found a guy in North Austin who basically lives right by Fry's and just pieces new computers together. It's almost as fast as the other one and, with the RAM, is probably a little faster. I finally made the switch from PATA to SATA and... now I'm caught up with the times. I'm happy and hopefully it will last for a few years.

So, I've obviously been screwing around with computer stuff too much... getting it all set up and such. I finally figured out how to broadcast video using VLC, Flash Media Encoder and... a virtual cable :D It's good. I've been showing movies for friends and family on jtv.

Otherwise, the power... dealy... on my tablet died. I'll have to send it out for repair... again.

Thanksgiving. I hadn't been out of the ZIP code for about two years so a break was definitely in order.

I went with my sister over to the East Texas woods. My dad's ladyfriend basically has a house on the grounds of an old lumber mill. I've never seen pine trees so big. They seriously were over 100 feet tall and I couldn't wrap my arms around the trunks. They were massive.

So we hung out with Dad and the other family and ate and drank a bit too much. I ate and drank so much. By the end of it, I just sorta felt like a fat, stupid grape.

The food was spectacular and the company was fantastic. I even got to ride a horse for the first time :) I spent about two hours on a gentle giant named Dude. We wandered through the woods and just sorta enjoyed eachother. Well, I'm sure by the end of it he was no longer enjoying me. But I sure am happy he put up as with me as long as he did. I had no idea how to steer him starting out, so his patience was hugely appreciated.

Lemme try to explain the area a little better. It's 80 acres wayyyy back in the woods with a private lake, horses and a sprawling 8 bedroom, one-story house with a fireplace that was built for heat. It was picturesque.

I played guitar for everybody right after Thanksgiving dinner and although my motor skills were questionable at best, everyone seemed to enjoy it. Two of the 8-person audience actually fell asleep... which might or might not be a good thing.

Most of the weekend was spent listening to the wind brush through the trees overhead with the occasional woodpecker screaming about bugs in the distance. It was pretty perfect.

I'm back to work now and am pacing myself with trading through December and probably the first half of January. It seizes along and finally drops back into gear in the middle of January. Everybody just dumps positions in all different directions around Christmas and then it just drops off until the third or fourth of January. You might think, "It's a market. It's either gonna go up or down, right?" Wrong. Around the holidays, people just start doing stupid things... inexplicable things. The market starts to move topwise and inside out. I'm only going to trade during these first two weeks and sit out until around the 10th or 12th of January.

I'm being pretty conservative right now. This Friday are the monthly unemployment reports and I've seen the FX market move completely unpredictably up to 48 hours before the release. I passed a great trade yesterday that would have been kind to me. I generally only take reaaaally good setups on Mondays because they can be either half-hearted moves or just fake altogether. My intuition was correct and the market did what I thought it would. That was satisfaction enough. Not taking a trade can be a very valuable trading decision.

I traded tonight. Gbpjpy made solid gains yesterday and maintained the level through the afternoon hours. There was no retracement and jpy seemed to be equally as weak on the other pairs with a pennant forming on a few. I entered half of my position and held for about an hour through some drawdown. The bulls stepped up and returned the price to the danger zone, within striking distance from yesterday's high. A support line was holding and I could see the 21 ma active on several jpy pairs on the 15m charts. That's all I needed. Someone was trying to make the market move just before the Asian traders left for lunch. I entered the other half and waited and watched the price peek through and then break out. I exited both positions 45 minutes later for +5.25%. I'll take that on any NFP week.

Here's some insight into NFP and news in general in the Forex market. Some people live and die by the news releases in FX. People generally react when the news is released and the market moves a lot in a small amount of time. While this is generally an exciting prospect, the duality of the market can crush you in an equal amount of time. The Non-Farm Payrolls are widely considered to be the most important economic indicator and it's released monthly. I actually don't pay attention to any other reports. In truth, there aren't really any meaningful reports released during the Asian session. I'm not able to trade London or NY right now. Otherwise I suppose I might follow the news a little bit more closely.

Back when I was learning the ropes and trading London overnight, I would stay up and watch everything consolidate and whipsaw around support and resistance in anticipation of the release the next morning. Foolishly, I would try to use some technical justification for opening a position in the hour or so before the NFP was released in hopes that I would make a [huge] quick buck. Well, trading the NFP report was the only time I got my ass kicked so badly that I would literally get spooked from taking any trades for the entire week after. On the bigger pairs, the price can dump 40, 50 or even 80 points in about two or three seconds. It's such a clusterfuck. Even after the initial move, the volume might be so ridiculous that even when you try to close your position, your broker won't be able to fill the order until the price has gone 30 or 40 more points in one direction. -120 points in 20 seconds? Been there... done that. Never again. There's nothing worse than working your ass off all week just to get knocked down on Friday and feel worthless through the weekend. Then you get all antsy and try to make trades appear out of thin air on Sunday and Monday before anything's actually moving. Terrible. I'm playin it safe.

When I was hedging, news releases weren't even that important because I was using any number of positions to cover previous losing positions. But with single trades, I've found it best to be very conservative in general during the entire week of NFP and just be willing to take profits a little quicker than normal.

I think I'm rambling now. I'm going to research some of OOo Calc's sorting functions.

The weather is finally wintry. It's been in the 40s for the last 48 hours and it's just barely gonna warm up tomorrow. It's been raining alllllll day and it looks like the water levels around here are slowly comin back. I'm ready to hibernate and forget about it. It's supposed to rain and snow on Friday. I'll believe it when I see it!

Christmas is coming. I have the last week in December off and I don't know what I'm gonna do with it yet. I might be helping my mom move. Maybe I'll fly somewhere if something comes up. I need some heat. I'm ready for summer again already. It's quiet in the cold.

>> "Siamese Cities" on Static Anonymity by Metric