Blessed by the Potato

Wayfare and I just had a rather monumental life experience, for which we received numerous lovely (and generous) cards of congratulations. What I found incredible was that we received somewhere in the neighbourhood of 60 cards, and there were only two pairs of similar ones. I’m amazed at how many unique cards there were, and since I doubt all of our friends and family conspired to pick different cards, it must mean that there is an extraordinary number of cards out there on the market.

I figured I’d geek out and do a quick combinatorics calculation to figure out how many that implies, however I find I can’t recall how to do the math any more. It’s kind of a sad point that I’m passing the halfway point in my PhD and I can’t remember how to do a high school math problem without opening up a book or Googling it.

So, even with just 59 unique cards, one can pick a set of 58 in 59 unique ways if no repetitions are allowed. However, repetitions are allowed, which leads to something like 10^80 possible combinations. I still can’t think of how to figure out how many cards that implies are on the market, but it does seem to tell me that it was pretty extraordinary that people chose such unique cards! It also makes me a little sad about where my math abilities are going to.

Well, it looks like the initial euphoria over the massive bailout plan last weekend has faded already, and the market has given up much of the gains today.

My computer’s problem looks to be much more complex than just a dead video card: possibly the power supply, motherboard, CPU, or multiple combinations thereof are fried in addition to the video card. So I’m going to do some more troubleshooting tonight, but it seems like I’m looking at needing a new computer: either I can take Wayfare’s (which is virtually identical to mine from a hardware point of view) and get her a new one, or get a new one for myself (she doesn’t game, so a new one for her might be a bit cheaper). I think I might try to hold off and continue to use just my laptop and work computer (and game on the Wii) for a few months, then maybe hope that I get computer parts for xmas.

The company that partially funds my research stipend had some bad results in their clinical trial, and have moved surprisingly quickly to terminate my student support. It looks like they’re gearing up to go bust, which has wiped out the stock I held in them, too. This is bad, but could be very bad. Since they hold all the patents for what my supervisor invented (and I continue to research), it means I might not be allowed to continue my research if they liquidate the patent rights and we don’t continue to enjoy our investigational license. The stock’s at about 8 cents today, so if anyone has $800,000 or so to lend me, I could stage a hostile takeover, keep it a going concern (though realistically, once I started buying up shares in a hostile takeover, the price would go up — better lend me $2M just to be sure). Maybe if I pretend I’m a bank with bad loans, one of the world governments will give me a few million?

And Stephen Harper, against all sense, won the election. Ok, it wasn’t the best time for the Liberals to flog their Green Shift plan; but what’s he going to do with another minority government? He just dissolved parliament, breaking his own election law, because he couldn’t work with a minority government. Now that he has another he’s going to pretend it’s all hunky dory and a mandate from Canadians? I was also really surprised at some of the Ontario ridings that elected Con MPs — they should have known better.

Update: After further troubleshooting, I found that my CPU is fine, my RAM is fine, and I think my hard disk/DVD-R is fine. My video card is shot, my motherboard is shot, and my power supply is unknown. So I think I’m looking at a new computer here :(

I’ve soured against gift cards in recent years, and have tried to turn back the stigma against cash gifts by thanking people profusely for the “universal gift card”. The government did a world of good by not letting companies forcibly expire the easily-misplaced interest-free loans, but in these tough economic times, that won’t necessarily stop a company from going bankrupt and not honouring them. I was reading a completely unrelated article about the mess we’re in when I noticed a little blurb about Linens ‘n Things going bankrupt this week, and that they might suspend their gift cards. “Hey!” I said to myself, “we just got a Linens ‘n Things gift card!”

I have no idea if they can do such a thing here in Ontario, but I’m hoping to rush right out to use it up soon anyway.

Well, I just got back from my vacation, and was all keen to get back to using my “real” computer, only to find that the video card was dead (it may also possibly be a problem with the power supply — I’ll check that out in the morning). I’m not quite sure how to take it: on the one hand, it’s a real bummer, and I don’t need the expense of a new video card now, especially since that one was just over a year old. On the other hand, that was an off-brand ATIx1650 (made by ASUS), and for some stupid reason the ATI drivers wouldn’t work with it, so I was stuck with the ASUS version of Catalyst 6.2 or something like that (and have run into problems with games that wouldn’t work with the old drivers).

I’m on the fence about what to do: my computer is now 5 years old, and might need to be upgraded in the next year or two (if it couldn’t handle StarCraft 2, my next anticipated must-have game, it would have been upgraded then). So, I could let this prompt me to upgrade early, but I really don’t have the cash for that right now. That means just replacing the video card (and possibly adding another gig of RAM as long as I’m at the store and tinkering), but then I’ll have a new AGP video card that I can’t use on a new system (which will almost certainly be PCI-e). Dilemma, dilemma.

Anyhow, I am completely behind the times on what a good video card is in the ~$100 range. Anyone know what I should look for?

Well, it seems to be a theme here lately that I try to reassure myself that the equity world is not ending. Since asking when will we hit bottom?, there has been a terrible week on the market. So again I have to wonder, how low can it go? How bad can it be?

The credit crisis is, obviously, nasty. There is a lot of fear out there. And we are probably heading into a recession, a nasty one from the looks of things.

However, the stock market is down something like 40% now, over 15% this week alone (down over 20% in the US S&P500). We’re just about back to where we were in the trough that followed the tech bust when stocks were not exactly overvalued. So how bad can it be? Have we really wiped out 6 years worth of growth and value? Are earnings going forward going to be 40% less than what they were last year?

I’m profoundly unqualified to answer those questions with any certainty, but my feelings are that we must be getting near the bottom of this market. I don’t think we’re heading into a depression; I don’t think owning pieces of large companies is going to go out of style and become a worthless hobby. Still, it’s hard to psych yourself into buying stocks.

However, I’m also more fearful than I have been previously. Credit is becoming less available, which makes me think that my LoC is not sufficient for my emergency fund, and that it’s time to start keeping some cash outside the market.

Also, huge daily drops like this feed on each other due to the leverage in the margin buying. People who borrow to buy stocks have a limit on how much they’re allowed to borrow. Once a stock falls too much, they can be forced to sell some in order to bring their loans (margin) back into balance, which can then drive stocks lower in a positive feedback cycle that feeds on itself. However, it’s got to stop at some point. At some point, the market will recover (though that might be 10+ years from now).