Castuserraticus

The financial markets are very complex. Stocks are a small part of it. There are almost infinite investment styles. I did my first investment 1 month before the Oct 1987 crash. I've tried professional advisors - didn't pay. I gradually got educated because it fascinated me. Over time, I've found advisors with good track records who both agree with and challenge my beliefs. Some information I pay for and some is free. Nobody can be consistently successful at anything without building up their knowledge base or by acting alone. I've been very fortunate. I think the first step is understanding the basic math of investing - rate of return (income based), return on investment (more capital gains oriented). Start small. Learn from your mistakes. Celebrate your victories. Don't be afraid to lock in a profit. The first loss is usually the cheapest. Mass psychology trumps fundamentals in the short term. Sometimes it's a good idea to sit on the sidelines and watch. There are internet sites where you can trade virtually.

Getting old is better than the alternative.

When the crowd panics Warren Buffet is buying. You can bet your @ss he's looked hard at what he's buying. Of course pref's with a 10% rate aren't hard to take. My best performer is a recent purchase of TD Bank. Analysts were saying the markets were discounting $70 oil when the stocks were 40% higher. There's a lot of downside protection for buyers now. Today's prices equate to discounting $30 oil? How much can demand drop? Income trust yields are approaching 20% at these prices.

Now the appeal process starts... Cold blooded killer with no remorse. He figured he was above the law. I hope he makes some "close friends" inside prison.

Born (1961) and raised in N Alta on the north bank of the Peace. My brother and I had slingshots - Dad showed us how to make them - and bow and arrows before graduating to .22's when we each hit 12. We were free to travel to wherever our particular transportation mode would take us. We all had our own vehicles prior to 16. Everyone had a gun rack in the back window of their truck year round. We hunted, fished, tried some trapping, ski-doo'd, motorbiked, and had full access to the axe and other sharp tools - even at the school. Our playground was the forest behind our house and, essentially, the whole community. Nobody got seriously hurt. We all carried pocket knives. The tools and weapons were part of life and we were taught to respect them. Kids now are taught to fear and avoid them.

Drifted down from Carseland on Saturday. I saw a group (family?) just downstream of the 24 bridge after we launched but couldn't clearly tell what they were using. When we got back that evening we saw a fisherman upstream of the bridge and a jet boat just rounding the furthest upstream corner. I told my friends I was going to phone RAP when we'd finished rigging out but didn't have much hope that anyone would be on duty late Saturday. Turns the fish cop was already there and had been busy with tickets in the area since 3pm that afternoon. He was waiting for the upstream wader to get out of the river but hadn't seen the boat upstream. Sounds like he picked off a few people fishing the closed area. Might have been your guy. Congrats on the reward money. Spend it well. The gov't runs multi billion$ surpluses so do not feel you need to leave it with them.

Take the pain seriously. A friend had a similar complaint that has turned into a chronic problem that 2 surgeries did not alleviate. There are small muscles in the upper forearm that can become inflamed from repetitive use - tennis, golf, fishing, computer mousing. The muscles are used on the backcast to lift the rod. For a while last winter my right arm was so sore from spending too much time on the computer that I had no strength in it - this was even using an ergonomic mouse. There's still low constant low level pain but it's very slowly getting better after massage, physio, stretching, and strengthening. I will likely have to always be careful the rest of my life. I now have 2 mouses and alternate hands during the intense work days and use hot keys more.

Pennzoil in Bowness - some of the best customer service attitude I've seen anywhere. Never tried to sell me anything I didn't need.

Well done. I want to go fishing!!

Wow!

Thanx I was there the other day and didn't ask 'cause it was busy.

Are they looking for volunteers to help with the harvest?

Thanx - I'd called Fisknat and got simple "no". My net will increase in value by about 7X with the new bag.

I have a sentimental attachment to my net since I built it myself utilizing the instructions on the old Brooks fishing club website. However, I'd like to change it to a rubber net bag since the nylon mesh tends to snag hooks. Does anyone know where I could source a bag or find the type of material used to make the rubber bags? The shops I've checked with have not been able to help.

There's an ebb and flow to this board and others I've monitored. Electronic communities are no different than physical communities. People/characters come and go. Offline communities develop from the online. Large groups with diverse interests/behaviours evolve into smaller groups where the participants have more closely aligned interests/behaviours. Change is constant. Some will pine for the "good old days" but you're always living in the good old days. It's disappointing when an active member decreases their involvement as we all benefit from the knowledge shared and discussion issues raised. But it's also inevitable. The young guys/gals will find mates and their time availability and/or interests will take a path does not include providing daily updates on their activities. Other members or new members will step up and take their place. Some will blame disruptive members for the change. This can have an influence but, generally, I don't believe it's the reason. Peoples' behaviours are always based on their needs. If someone is less active in posting the chances are something has changed in their life that has taken a more important role. As long as the moderators can maintain a consistent set of core values the board will prosper.

Birchy - I have the identical truck to the one you had stolen. I pull a 1600# tent trailer. I think that is close to the useable mx of the vehicle. I was disappointed to find out the Toyota has less hp than the Pathfinder. There's a gov't of Canada website that provides fuel economy ratings for all vehicles. Check it out and you'll be surprised at how little you're saving with the 4runner over a larger truck. http://www.oee.nrcan.gc.ca/transportation/...ption-guide.cfm

I took the phone into Telus at Market Mall. The girl suggested doing a master reset on the phone. This clears the memory and takes it back to factory settings. This has fixed the short battery life problem. She saved my contacts and reloaded them afterwards. I ended up with everything being duplicated so it looks like not all the memory clears. Now I get 3-5 days per charge as advertised. It took less than 10 minutes and was free.

So my latest battery this year has lasted about 3 weeks. I don't even get 24 hours of standby. This is the third one this year for the new Krazr. The battery in my first Sanyo phone lasted over 7 years. I replaced it because friends were getting better signal outside the city with Motorola phones. Everyone I've talked to seems to have the same problem with short battery life for the Razr/Krazr phones. I'm giving Motorola one more shot but I'm not optimistic. I don't really have much use for a Blackberry type - just a simple phone. Who's happy with their phone and what make is it?

Stampede motto I heard once "Save the disappointment and go ugly early."

Look for blue water. Concentrate on drop-offs and edges where shallow water transitions into deeper water. These areas can provide a constant food supply and shelter. Take the time to sit on the bank and pick the pockets where you see the colour change from light to darker. It does not take a very large pocket to hold fish. Start with working the shallow water and work into the deeper. The elbow around Bragg Creek is poor water - not enough structure. There are some decent holes but they are few and far between.

I carried and used a spool of 6# Stren line for nymphing for about 6 years. It was junked this spring when it seemed to break too easily. In the past 3 days I lost 3 complete triple nymph rigs when the new 6# Maxima I bought this spring snapped off above the top hook for no apparent reason. I tested the Maxima and was able to break a couple of pieces off fairly easily and cleanly. The next section however was difficult to break and stretched significantly before breaking. I carry the leader material in a zippered vest pocket. It receives very little exposure to direct sunlight. The standard tug test seems inadequate. I often give the line a tug test but the experiences of the past week indicates this is not cutting it. I hate having to retie while drifting through good water or while fish are rising. How do you test your leader material? How often do you test it? How much UV exposure weakens the line? Do lines differ in their UV resistance?

Aaaahhhh!! My eyes!!

Guides are often amongst the most vocal advocates for protection/management of the resource. Action that benefits their business benefits the resource for the recreational users. I believe Dave Jensen was instrumental in initiating the stream watch program in your region as an example.

After 6 lock-ups in the past year I've learned a couple of things. Put the hard drive in another machine to see if it can be read. It may be the controller vs the drive. There are services available that can recover most of the data depending on how bad it's screwed up. Birchy gave me the name of one that's affiliated with Seagate. My guys sent out a drive to WeRecoverData.com and they were able to recover a significant amount of data. These services will assess your drive for recovery. My tech guys and a local "specialist" had said the data was unrecoverable. The recovery was $1000 but it gave me back just about 6 mos worth of work. The data is likely still there on your drive. The real experts (Seagate, et al) are the ones to contact for a free assessment.

Every 20 years? In the 1970's the media was predicting a coming ice age. Scientists love to measure things and derive conclusions - hypotheses. To become a law, an hypotheses must predict results in repeated experiments under a range of conditions. Warming due to anthropogenic CO2 (~3% of total atmospheric CO2) is a theory that can never be proven or disproven. There are near infinite variables affecting climate. Computer models of natural systems are always inherently flawed because natural systems are immensely complex. Take a small system such as cancer of a certain organ. How is our search for a cure going? The climate is immensely more complex.