Art O’Connor

This about the sickest thing I have seen in a while. I wonder if Forrest dropped in on this while he was there?

Scott H Biram came to the 801 last night and it was a beer soaked, smoke filled, hillbilly hulabaloo. As far as I know it was his first visit to SLC and hot damn if he did not make the best of it. He is a self proclaimed “Dirty Old One Man Band” plays a brand of blues that is best experienced live. Not that his records are bad (go get one today), it is just that the man has a presence that needs to be experienced live.

My Caribbean adventure is over. To be honest I had pretty low expectations for this trip. The idea of being trapped on a boat for a week sounded like a week in hell. Still though it has been a long time since the whole family has been together and that was something to look forward to so I figured I would make the best of it. I shouldn’t have even worried. The boat was soooo relaxing. Both Rachel and slept better than we have in months. I was amazed at how relaxed I was and realized how much stress I have been carrying around lately. It all pretty much was left on the dock in Ft. Lauderdale. We stopped in St. Maarten and St. Thomas, both days were spent swimming in the ocean (Orient Beach and Magens Bay) and sipping cool drinks in the shade. I only checked my e-mail twice and did not talk on the phone once for 7 days straight. I had plans to get all kinds of work done, make some important business decisions, and run everyday. Somehow none of that seemed important and none of it got done (I did run twice and swam a little).

Now back to the real world.

The Train is going nautical. Rachel and I are heading to Miami to get on a boat with my mom, aunt, and brothers. A week on sun and endless buffets should have me tanned and well fed for the massive mileage I need to pile on when we get back. It will be a really fun trip. I have my cabana clothes down from the attic and plan on owning that shuffle board court.

So I made a choice this weekend. Pay to ride the road or go ride in the dirt for free. I chose the dirt and I don’t regret it one bit. I have done HoN every year it has existed and only managed to keep air in my tires once so I really don’t feel like I missed anything anyway. So yeah, my girlfriend is tougher than me, big deal she is most likely tougher than you too.

So I have been putting up a lot of financial doom and gloom stuff lately. Things are bad out there, we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to sub prime, the dollar continues it freefall, energy is going parabolic. What can you do? Take some time and really look at your finances. Do you have a 401k? If so do you know what you are invested in and why? There are big opportunities in this market, try and look beyond the hype. Turn off CNBC, do some real research.

When you run a business the idea is to make money. At the end of the year you take your sales and subtract your expenses, hopefully that leaves you with a profit. Pretty simple yeah? Well if you have ever seen the financial statement of a publically traded company you know that there is a lot that goes into those figures. Basically a company has 3 levels of books. According to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, Level 1 comes from “quoted prices in active markets”. Basically things we know the value of, buildings, inventory, electricity bills, etc. Mark to Market value easily verified.

Level 2 is valued using “observable inputs” like recent transactions for similar items where market quotes may not be available. Lets call this Mark to Model. Sort of like when a realtor pulls comps in a neigborhood to value your home. A little more vague but still somewhat based in reality as well as prone to exageration.

This brings us to Level 3. Fair value is based on “the reporting entity’s own assumptions about market participant assumptions developed based on the best information available in the circumstances (unobservable inputs).” In other words pure magic! Using Level 3 a company can make a bad Quarter into a good Quarter and hide such nastiness as oh I don’t know, shit loans they knew had no chance of being repaid! I read this on Bloomberg.com about a company that may or may not use stage coaches. “—- —– reported record net income of $2.28 billion, up 9 percent from a year earlier. Read the footnotes to its latest quarterly report, though, and you will see a new term in accounting lingo called ‘Level 3′ gains. Without these, the financial-services company’s earnings would have declined.”

Don’t worry America your government is in control. Here is some footage of Brittney Spears train wreck of a life to distract while your money get stolen from under your nose.

George Carlin - Who Really Controls America

No not the movie, that is about my total mileage for the season so far. Um yeah, gonna be while before you see me racing or doing much riding for that matter. Have fun at Hell of the North.