cubanlinks

Dollar Cost Averaging – an investment strategy designed to reduce volatility in which securities, typically mutual funds, are purchased in fixed dollar amounts at regular intervals, regardless of what direction the market is moving.

Please excuse this uncharacteristic foray into personal finance, but I find myself in a very unique situation. When working full-time from 2000-2006, I was the kind of person who maxed-out my 401(k) and even took the time to set-up a Roth IRA, maxing that out as well. I spent about 6 years doing this before I left IT to start a small business.

As I was leaving my job I decided to migrate my 401(k) to a traditional IRA at my brokerage because I hated the limited choices that the 401(k) provider offered. So, into this IRA came a decent cash infusion, and there is sat. I became too busy to think about what to invest it in and soon forgot about it.

A few years later (2008) I was embroiled in a legal conflict and felt very uncertain about what might happen. So, I liquidated some holding I had in my brokerage account (not my IRA’s, just my normal account) in order to have cash on hand in the case of an emergency.

SO! This brings us to today and absolute wreckage that are our public markets. As I write this, the DOW is at 9,955 and 28% down YTD. My own portfolio is down about 18% YTD. The question is, is this a good time to buy? I sure thought so back in late September. Check-out my portfolio prior to September 22nd:

I decided to make a large investment in an S&P 500 index fun as well as invest in a company I’ve always wanted to own, Google:

To date, I’ve lost 25% on my Google stake and 15% on the S&P 500. Never to be put-off, I then woke up this morning and decided to buy some more firms I admired, Intel, Ebay and News Corp:

How much will I lose on them on the coming days, who knows. All I do know is that things always seem bleakest before they get better. I would like to continue to make investments all the way down, buying stock at cheaper and cheaper prices. If you have a chance, read Mark Cuban’s post about how to get rich. It’s ultimately a diatribe about the ROI you can earn on simply being smarter with your spending (great point) and the value of having cash on hand to take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves.

I just got engaged to Carrie Knittel this past Saturday. And wouldn’t you know it? There were fireworks!

more photos of the blushing bride-to-be to come

I knew it was coming, but I wasn’t sure how. It seems my friend Rachel’s account has been compromised, somehow:

Is there a security hole out there? Is anyone else seeing this?

I will not be able to make Al’s annual drink-fest. It just so happens that a little thing called Austin City Limits is happening that same weekend, and my girl is coming down to Austin to boot. Choices, choices.

I am seriously bummed at missing out. I don’t think I made it last year, and I was really looking forward to redeeming myself and reliving the glory of whupping-up on Gavin Smith during the 2006 Poker Tournament or rolling myself under a car to escape a beating in 2005. I have nothing cool to say about 2004, since I pretty much just passed the fuck out.

For everyone who’s making it up to Al’s neck of the woods, dial-a-shots all around!

It is really strange the kind of immersion you experience when you move to a new city for the summer. It’s not unlike the experience I had moving to Austin and starting my MBA program. You’re moving to a new city, you’re meeting new people and you’re trying your best to navigate the terrain of a competitive environment. I think it’s safe to say that the experience here is similar, but more intense. More visceral. The other MBA’s here are top performers at top programs, and you’ve got 12-weeks to make an impression.

But it’s not all cloaks and daggers. The MBA recruiting team has put-on some pretty great events for us, including an “Amazing Race” that involved Lake Union, electric boats, alcohol, lots of clues and a Polaroid camera. Tomorrow I’m hosting a Texas Hold’em tournament, which should be a blast.

And finally, just when I was about to give up on the weather in Seattle, we were hit with the perfect day on Sunday. Mid 60’s, zero clouds, and a gentle breeze. My buddy Tiju was in town, and Emily and I took him all over Seattle. Literally. I probably put 50 miles on my odometer yesterday, and I think we crossed at least 5 bridges. The nicest part of the day was probably hanging out in Gas Works Park and catching some rays. I could definitely get used to these kinds of days.

One of my close friends (Chris Miller) is looking for some more people to join his team for the Ragnar Relay Race (September 26-27, Cumberland, MD to DC).

It’s essentially an overnight relay race where you take turns running, riding in vans through beautiful Maryland in between legs.

Chris has a solid core of runners for the team but is looking for people to fill-out the roster. There are different lengths for all of the legs, so even if you don’t run marathons for breakfast, you can definitely participate and have a good time.

If you’re interested (in signing up, finding out more, etc) just let me know. I’ll put you in touch with Chris.

I’m typing this post from my desk at Microsoft. I’m an MBA intern for the summer in the OSG Live group. I’m pretty psyched to be here and hopefully will have more to say about this soon.

I’ve been in Seattle since Monday. I recently grouped my pictures of the drive up into a set on Flickr. Check-out Carrie’s pictures too. I just took a few shots with my iPhone, she had a lot more fun with her digital camera.

This Tuesday I’ll be hitting the road. Destination: Seattle, WA. I’ll be one of 50 MBA interns spending the summer at Microsoft, and I decided that it would be fun to put some miles on the Jetta and see some parts of America I’ve never seen.

The only stop that is nailed-down will be in Los Angeles where I’ll be picking up Carrie at LAX on Thursday night. We will then road trip the rest of the way up to Seattle together, and she’ll fly back to DC on Tuesday.

I’m really excited about the trip, and will be keeping a running log with my iPhone (pictures to Flickr and notes to Twitter). The best way to follow along would be to check-out my FriendFeed. Everything will get posted there!

[via Deadspin]

Simmons: I still love writing my column and only re-signed last year because I really did believe that we had hashed out all the behind the scenes bullshit and come to some sort of agreement on creative lines, media criticism rules, the promotion of the column and everything else on ESPN.com. Within a few months, all of those things changed and certain promises were not kept. It’s as simple as that.

Wow, ESPN looks like they’re dicking over the Sports Guy. Don’t they realize the power he wields? Easily 50% of my time on espn.com is spent reading Simmons. If he walks, Disney/ESPN is going to have a shit storm on their hands.

I am making a temporary switch to FeedBurner as I try to untangle the issues with my RSS feed. With a simple Lighttpd redirect, all requests for /blog/feed (that are not coming from the FeedBurner bot) will be redirected to feeds.feedburner.com/cubanlinks. I have resisted handing over control of my RSS feed to a third party, but given everything else we surrender these days (links, photos, videos, etc) what’s the point of resisting?

I have no idea how long this has been going on. Maybe all way back to switching to Mephisto as my blogging tool? In any event, it seems that some feed readers (Google Reader, FriendFeed, etc) have been consuming my feed and interpreting the entries in an odd way. Because of some bizarre mis-configuration, the feed was producing entries linked to www.cubanlinks.org even though the requested domain was simply cubanlinks.org (sans www). This caused the feed readers to think there were 2 entries for every post (one for www and one for the non-prefixed domain).

I think this problem has been fixed. If it hasn’t, for goodness sake, please let me know!

I’ve integrated Disqus commenting on this site. What do you think? Disqus amongst yourselves. I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen on other sites (Scripting News, etc) but Fred Wilson’s post pushed me over the edge.

Apparently Obama won “Norh Carolina” with 47% of the vote to Clinton’s 49%. Huh?