The game was fun and rather challenging during a very volatile time in the market. Many stocks saw a 52 week low and the market fell below 1999 levels.

We saw the almost collapse of the Euro and the beginnings of a double dip recession. It was a challenging time [...]]]> Well, the challenge is over.

The game was fun and rather challenging during a very volatile time in the market. Many stocks saw a 52 week low and the market fell below 1999 levels.

We saw the almost collapse of the Euro and the beginnings of a double dip recession. It was a challenging time to do anything with the markets.

I was thinking that I just didn’t do very well this time. I was super busy at work with a HUGE project underway so I couldn’t do much from work and had to plan my attacks at night when the markets were down.

So I looked and my main board of 3, which would be what I would do if I really had the money to spend ended up in the best shape. Today my best game was titled “Milkman Mainly” was up 17.76% with 1,177,591.47 in the account at the end. I was up 24K in currency trading an 90K in bonus funds which really only puts me at 63K in stock market trades. I was bowing my head in shame as this just didn’t seem all that great.

Then I went over to see the leaderboards to see how badly I must have gotten trounced this game.

Holly Molly… WTF!!!

I was ranked in the top 99.25% of all contestants. That’s my highest ranking ever.

I was 5057th out of some 4 million boards.

I actually did do very very well, and competing against people that do this sort of thing for a living and have all day to research stuff or possibly inside trade all they want because it’s a game.

I’m feeling much better about myself and my stock market skills.

I just wanted to share with the people I know that would understand the accomplishment.

Mike

I needed a script to gracefully shutdown and startup an application when the server was rebooted.  Again, not an issue so much with linux as you almost never HAVE [...]]]> Boy I really miss Unix sometimes.  Things that are so super easy in Unix/Linux are often a total pain in the butt in the Windows world.

I needed a script to gracefully shutdown and startup an application when the server was rebooted.  Again, not an issue so much with linux as you almost never HAVE to reboot. Windows you reboot like you catch a cold.  “oh you are not feeling well? Reboot twice and call me in the morning.”  Plus windows systems like to reboot every time there is any sort of patching going on.  So I needed to be able to have a custom script run to stop and start an application.

A startup script is a quick and easy way of getting a process running when the machine boots. The computer startup process will be affected by the time it takes to run the program, though, so you might want to ensure you call it with the START command from a batch file, or specifying not to wait for the executable to complete from whatever script language you use. (the key point there is: run the script asynchronously unless it’s critical, or doesn’t need to be run asynchronously cos it will always take no time at all. Long boots = unhappy users).

In Windows XP/2003 you will need to use the group policy editor which can be found under Start / Run / GPEDIT.MSC.    You will then need to navigate to Computer Settings -> Windows Settings -> Scripts (Startup/Shutdown) or something similar to be able to set a startup script.  You can see the scripts outlined in the scripts.ini file or add your own scripts to the Startup/Shutdown directories found under: C:\WINDOWS\System32\GroupPolicy\Machine\Scripts\

Using a Win32 Service is an alternative option – you can use the SRVANY utility from the Resource Kit to “service-ify” pretty much any executable. VS .Net and later also let you build a managed service directly.

And Task Scheduler gets much more capable as of Vista/2008, able to run scripts at startup, on idle, when certain other conditions are met; it’s pretty cool. Task scheduler has the possible advantage of being able to specify the user account under which the task runs, if that’s important to you.

I hope this little tid-but of information can be helpful to those that need this sort of thing.

I need to watch the currency markets and decided when to get out.  I think the British Pound is very weak against the [...]]]> For the 1st day, I have decided to go with the following for the currency trading.
Week one, split GBP and BRL at 40K each, and JPY and EUR at 20K each.

I need to watch the currency markets and decided when to get out.  I think the British Pound is very weak against the dollar now and should be back to parity very soon.  The Brazilian Real looks like it’s climbing too.  The Euro and Japan Yen are on a rise, but should be watched closely.  I wanted to get the upticks, but minimize the down risks.

Well, that idea went out the door.  The challenge only lets you trade about a Dozen currencies.

My quick summary of the currencies at the start of the game.

I had so much fun with this last time it was run.  I hope to do even better this year. I thought I could use my Blog space to list out how I do. what stocks I am selecting to purchase and why.

First, there is the “SUBST” command.  This command comes with the OS.  Of course I am talking XP and Windows 2003.  I would assume it’s still available [...]]]> Thought I would throw out some information on creating links in Windows now that this is the second time I had to go and look the information up.

First, there is the “SUBST” command.  This command comes with the OS.  Of course I am talking XP and Windows 2003.  I would assume it’s still available in the latest releases.  This command will let you create a Drive Letter out of a directory.

subst M: /d
subst M:  C:\music

The first line deletes the reference to the M: drive, just to make things clean.
The 2nd line create an M drive that actually links back to C:\Music on the hard drive.  Not sure how handy this can be.   It could find a way to be used to say copy a DVD to the harddrive, then create a drive letter so the application can find the DVD info. Sort of spoofing a DVD drive if needed.  I haven’t tried it, but that’s about all I can think of what it could be used for at the moment.

The next handy linker item I stumbled upon is a little executable called LinkD.exe .  This little gem will allow you to create hardlinks like Unix on your PC.  The executible is part of the old 2000 Resource kit, so not sure on how it acts on Vista or above.

I found just the executable here without having to download the whole resource kit.

To free up some space on my C: drive, I copied everything from C:\WINDOWS\Installer to H:\WIN_FILES\Installer.  However, Windows expects to find the Installer files on C:.  To allow Windows to find the needed files, I used LINKD.EXE to point C:\WINDOWS\Installer to H:\WIN_FILES\Installer. The actual command to do this is:

LINKD.EXE “C:\WINDOWS\Installer” “H:\WIN_FILES\Installer”

That’s it! All my files moved to another physical drive without any problems.

* Note that the order of the command args is different than the Unix ln command.

Sorry, had to vent.  I then thought this was rather amusing and I needed to make a note of it before I forgot it, and really wanted to use it.

Why you may ask.  The first reason was a long driving trip to Utah.  I drove about 1600 miles in one weekend.  There was just too much going on to be doing the workouts.  The driving, racing and scenery was awesome.

Ha, made you look.  the P90X program for these weeks is on hiatus.

Why you may ask.  The first reason was a long driving trip to Utah.  I drove about 1600 miles in one weekend.  There was just too much going on to be doing the workouts.  The driving, racing and scenery was awesome.

Look at that view

As for a workout, driving a car at high speeds in a race will really wear you out fast.  I also rode go-carts so much I have a bruise on my thighs and mid back and my forearms where just toast by the end of the day.  My back side is still tired a few days after the long drive home after driving all weekend.

So, now that it’s week4 day 3, I feel that I could start to start up the workouts once again.  Someone I talked with who is a graduate of P90X said that I should just start back up with week3 where I stopped.  I have at least attempted to stay on track with the diet plan and eat more proteins, fruits and veggies.  Although, the conference had breakfasts that were ALL 100% carbs every morning.  I actually skipped 2 breakfasts of donuts to go eat something like a ham and cheese omelet.

I will wait for the return from Mexico to start back up on week3.  Funny how week3 will commence on week6 Oct18th.  At least I don’t have any travel plans for the rest of the year. The plan should still be able to get me ready for the ski season and looking awesome for Spring Break!!