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Why Dogecoin to $1 is Only a Matter of Time

The Bubble
It’s February of 2021, and let’s be completely honest: We’re in a bubble. It’s kind of like 1999 but not the same. In 1999, interest rates were much higher. Today, they are nearly zero. In some countries, they are even negative. From a long-term perspective, this is very bad.
The Federal Reserve is completely to blame for this. Their policies are entirely reckless, and officials refuse to acknowledge what is going on here. The Coronavirus hysteria caused by the media and enabled by officials made the crash last summer the worst man-made disaster in the history of our financial system. The Great Depression was caused by over-speculation and a lack of regulation in an emerging financial system. The Great Recession was caused by greed and fraud (strangely, no one is in jail for this). This market collapse was caused by elected officials and the fed, who got trigger-happy and cut rates to zero back in the spring of 2020.
Whatever we wind up calling the burst of this bubble is to be determined. It will, however, be entirely manmade because the fed refuses to acknowledge the speculative behavior currently going on in SPACs, Cryptos, Penny Stocks, and anything else that serves as a legal Ponzi scheme for inflating the bubble. Even real, dividend-paying stocks have gotten way overvalued in some sectors. Also, since the fed has no plans of raising rates within the next two years (so they say for now, at least), if you’re searching for yield, you have nowhere else to look than the equities markets or one of these legalized forms of Ponzi schemes. It’s extremely unfair to conservative or retired investors looking for an honest return on their savings. This all is actually why it is a great time to look at Dogecoin, as I will get to in a moment. So long as rates are near zero, the bubble will continue to go on for longer and longer. And while it continues, people will constantly look for the next big thing.
For How Long?
Now, this may sound all doom and gloom, but that’s not my point. One day the bubble will burst, but I’m not making a prediction of when that will happen. Anyone making up dates for when the bubble will burst is either clueless or a con artist. No one knows when this bubble will burst. It could be weeks, months, or even years. One thing is for sure, the bubble will not burst just because things are overvalued. That’s not how bubbles work.
There needs to be a catalyst to burst the bubble. A major military conflict. An unexpected move or comment by the fed (raising rates, calling out the bubble for what it is, etc.). Another nationwide lockdown. I can go on with examples, but a little selloff here and there (August 2020) that causes the financial media to lose its mind is not enough. Just because you claim the bubble is bursting isn’t enough either. If you follow the media, you will get burned over and over again. That’s how it works. They want you to go to their sponsors for help, and once they burn you (sell you gold, overcharge you for poor investments, etc), you’ll come back to them hoping to figure things out. It’s a shell game. When the bubble burst, it will happen extremely fast and unexpectedly. There’s nothing wrong with playing the bubble, but you need to be mindful of when it ends because once the music stops, there will be a mad rush for the exits. You don’t want to be stuck holding the bag because everything will get crushed when the bubble burst. Even the blue-chip stocks that pay solid dividends will get hammered.
Fundamentals Don’t Matter (For Now)
In this bubble environment, fundamentals don’t make sense and, quite frankly, they don’t matter. You can argue back and forth all day long about whether something has a practical future or whether something is overvalued. I’m not here to do that about Dogecoin, Bitcoin, or any other crypto. The same could be said about Penny Stocks right now. (Hint: virtually all of these companies are way overvalued). You can find tons of articles of that nature, and I’m not likely to change your preconceived notions anyway. If we look at all the irrational bubbles that have occurred lately, you are a complete fool if you believe that TSLA or BTC is worth nearly a trillion dollars. It’s worth nowhere near that valuation.
How do I determine what something is worth, and who do I mean? It is called the market cap. In layman’s terms, that is where you take all the stock shares and multiply it by the share price. And I’m not recommending buying or selling TSLA or BTC, I’m just pointing out that these valuations are absurd. Does that mean they will not pass 1 trillion dollars? Of course not. There’s a very reasonable chance they do pass a $1 trillion market cap. That sounds absurd to write but it’s true. When the bubble bursts, you better believe fundamentals will be back in play. This disconnect can’t last forever. But it can go on for a while. And while it lasts, we all want to make some money
A Quick Word About ALL Cryptos
While I don’t believe Cryptocurrencies are going anywhere (as in, people will always buy and sell them), I also do not see any APPLICABLE future in them other than trading with other people. In fact, the biggest use I see of Cryptocurrencies is for illegal and untraceable transactions. The government will do all they can over the next several years to bring in lost tax revenue and track transactions better, but that’s the extent to which Cryptos will have relevance. How do I know this? Because the federal reserve, which is backed by the taxing authority of the US Government and the might of the US military, isn’t about to let some alternative currency usurp the US dollar. How do you think we can afford to provide all this government stimulus to fight Covid? If you think about this, you will see why other countries are much worse off. They must play by our rules, while we get to export our inflation to other countries because they must use the USD to buy commodities on the international exchanges (look at what happened when Saddam tried to circumvent this). If they print more money, their currency gets devalued. That’s why as bad as things look, relatively speaking, the US isn’t in terrible shape compared to the rest of the world.
If your financial future is so married to Bitcoin, ask yourself this: what happens if your account gets hacked? Who will you call? Who will make you whole again? If you have a brokerage account with legitimate stocks, there are regulations in place. There is the SIPC which protects again brokerage failure. With Bitcoin, you are completely gambling. This lack of regulation and lack of price stability means that there is no viable path to Bitcoin being a legitimate currency. Does it mean people can buy and sell it? Of course. But if you are in the cult of believing that Bitcoin is the future world reserve currency, you need to get your head examined.
Gold and Silver con artists have been trying for decades for people to get on this alternative currency train. At least gold and silver have some practical industrial applications. And hundreds of years of history on its side. Crypto isn’t anything but something people agree upon as having value. Why do I point this out? Because the one thing you need to do is separate yourself from what you think you know about Crypto and Blockchain, etc. While it all sounds cool and revolutionary, it really doesn’t matter. The US government could easily create their own form of Crypto that gives them more control. The decentralized part just doesn’t jive with our current global hegemony. If you don’t understand this, you should think more and read less. Once you accept this, you can start to see all Crypto as fundamentally worth the same: virtually nothing. The technicals, however, are why we want to look at Dogecoin.
Relative Valuation of Dogecoin
Now that you understand a little more background into where we are, I believe Dogecoin is extremely undervalued. Why? It’s simple. Relative valuation. This is one of the easiest and most efficient ways to compare investments. Ok, so maybe this isn’t really investing anymore; it’s gambling. Still, we can apply the same concept. Imagine two companies: they are in the same industry and have similar margins, earnings, growth prospects, etc. One company is valued at $50 billion and costs $120 per share, and one is valued at $85 billion and costs $80 per share. Which one would you invest in? Of course, you would invest in the one that is worth $50 billion at $120 per share. The cost per share means absolutely nothing. It is psychological.
Now, you say Dogecoin isn’t on par with Bitcoin and that where I’m going with this isn’t a fair comparison. Go back and read the last section. That’s why I wrote about the practical applications of Cryptocurrencies in general. None of that matters. The only thing that matters is the general sentiments shared by people that buy and believe in Cryptocurrency. So, let’s look at the current valuations:
Bitcoin – Price $40,500, Market Cap $755B (estimated as of 2-6-21)
Dogecoin – Price $.05, Market Cap $4.4B (estimated as of 2-6-21)
(Source: Yahoo Finance)
Now, I’m not saying Dogecoin is worth what Bitcoin is. I’m not even saying it's worth half or a third of Bitcoin. Who really knows? No one does. You certainly cannot say for certain that one is better than another. One is more “established” and has more name recognition. What I am saying is this: if Dogecoin goes to $1, it will have a market cap of just over $85 billion. Even at Bitcoin’s current market cap, that’s just over 1/10 of its value. And that isn’t even pricing in more appreciation of Bitcoin’s value over time. This means I see tons of room for Dogecoin to run. (I know some will mention dilution via minting of new coins, but that’s another discussion and not entirely relevant to the points I am trying to make in this piece.)
Could Dogecoin match Bitcoin? That sounds absurd, but let’s look just for fun: if Dogecoin were to have the same market cap as Bitcoin, that means it would have a current price of $8.55. So, what am I saying here? You must know the range of possibilities (within reason, if that even exists anymore) before you start thinking about price targets. To say Dogecoin is going to $100 is just absurd; things need to be put in the proper context.
Why Dogecoin?
Using relative valuation, I believe you could make a case for any Crypto. Will they all run to Bitcoin’s level? Of course not. The last question is why Dogecoin? This is the most important one that we have to answer before deciding on buying Dogecoin. The answer is simple: hype and name recognition. If I look at the most valuable cryptocurrencies by market cap, Dogecoin is number 12. I have taken an informal survey of probably 100 people over the last two weeks. I showed them the top 15 Cryptocurrencies by market cap to see which they were familiar with: Stellar, Binance Coin, Cardano, Polkadot, XRP . . . almost all of these were completely unheard of. But, somehow, they have valuations of 2-3 times Dogecoin.
Dogecoin has a few things going for it. First, hype. Elon Musk and many other prominent celebrities are pilling in. Mark Cuban has said he’d buy it over a lottery ticket. That alone can help aid a very quick lift off. Second, the name Dogecoin is very easy to remember and a trendy thing. What the heck is Cardano anyway? XRP? I mistakenly called it XPR before I edited this piece. And if you are still hung up on the practical use of Dogecoin or other Cryptos, you are missing the point of this piece entirely. Look at the story behind Bitcoin. An anonymous person online created a decentralized platform for money movement or something like that. What? How in the world did that idea ever take traction? It’s just like people online arguing over which Penny Stock is the next big thing. Neither person is right, but the perception is really all that matters.
Third, stimulus checks will be hitting within weeks or months. This naturally promotes price inflation when people have more dollars chasing few goods. People will inevitably pile into whatever they think is the next great thing. Dogecoin has momentum right now. And this brings me to number four.
Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, FOMO is very powerful right now. There are people all over the world that know people who have won big money in this bubble. Penny stocks, GameStop, Bitcoin, and many others that you can name. How many people do you personally know that have won big in the lottery? Probably none. This is a unique time in history. People have won big in this market and are looking for the next thing.
Dogecoin is something that could pick up steam quickly. It could blow up overnight. It may not, and that is the risk you take. At the end of the day, it’s just money that you can always make more of. Life-changing money is worth the risk when you find the right risk-reward ratio.
Do your due diligence, but also think ahead to a scenario that you could imagine. Would you be that surprised if Dogecoin reached $1? And if it did, would you be surprised if it started running towards multiple dollars? $1 is a psychological number that typically leads to a further breakout. The current market cap suggests this is all very possible. Now imagine getting in at four or five cents.
Disclosure: Long Dogecoin with Diamond Hands. No positions in any other things mentioned. -BJ

Old Austin Tales: Forgotten Video Arcades of The 1970s & 80s

In the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was a young teen growing up in far North Austin, it was a popular custom for many boys in the neighborhood to assemble at the local Stop-N-Go after school on a regular basis for some Grand Champion level tournaments in Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. The collective insistence of our mothers and fathers to get out of the house, get some exercise, and refrain from playing NES or Sega on the television only led us to seek out more video games at the convenience store down the road. Much allowance and lunch money was spent as well as hours that should have been devoted to homework among the 8 or 9 regular boys in attendance, often challenging each other to 'Best of 5' matches. I myself played Dhalsim and SubZero, and not very well, so I rarely ever made it to the 5th match. The store workers frequently kicked us out for the day only to have us return when they weren't working the counter anymore if not the next day.
There is something about that which has been lost in the present day. While people can today download the latest games on Steam or PSN or in the app store on your smartphone, you can't just find arcade games in stores and restaurants like you used to be able to. And so the fun of a spontaneous 8 or 10 person multiplayer video game tournament has been confined to places like bars, pool halls, Pinballz or Dave&Busters.
But in truth it was that ubiquity of arcade video games, how you could find them in any old 7-11 or Laundromat, which is what killed the original arcades of the early 1980s before the Great Crash of 1983 when home video game consoles started to catch up to what you saw in the arcade.
I was born in the mid 1970s so I missed out on Pong. I was kindergarten age when the Golden Age of Arcade Games took place in the early 1980s. There used to be a place called Skateworld on Anderson Mill Road that was primarily for roller skating but had a respectable arcade in its own right. It was there that I honed my skills on the original Tron, Pac Man, Galaga, Pole Position, Defender, and so many others. In the 1980s I remember visiting all the same mall arcades as others in my age group. There was Aladdin's Castle in Barton Creek Mall, The Gold Mine in Highland, and another Gold Mine in Northcross which was eventually renamed Tilt. Westgate Mall also had an arcade but being a north austin kid I never went there until later in the mid 1990s. There were also places like Malibu Grand Prix and Showbiz Pizza and Chuck-E-Cheeze, all of which had fairly large arcades for kids which were the secondary attraction.
If you're of a certain age you will remember Einsteins and LeFun on the Drag. They were there for a few decades going back way before the Slacker era. Lesser known is that the UT Student Union basement used to have an arcade that was comparable to either or both of those places. Back in the pre-9/11 days it was much easier to sneak in if you even vaguely looked like you could be a UT student.
But there was another place I was too young to have experienced called Smitty's up further north on 183 at Lake Creek in the early 1980s. I never got to go there but I always heard about it from older kids at the time. It was supposed to have been two stories of wall to wall games with a small snack bar. I guess at the time it served a mostly older teen crowd from Westwood High School and for that reason younger kids my age weren't having birthday parties there. It wasn't around very long, just a few years during the Golden Age of Arcades.
It is with almost-forgotten early arcades like that in mind that I wanted to share with y'all some examples of places from The Golden Age of the Video Arcade in Austin using some old Statesman articles I've found. Maybe someone of a certain age on here will remember them. I was curious what they were like, having missed out by being slightly too young to have experienced most of them first hand. I also wanted to see the original reaction to them in the press. I had a feeling there was some pushback from school/parent/civic groups on these facilities showing up in neighborhood strip malls or next to schools, and I was right to suspect. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First let's list off some places of interest. Be sure to speak up if you remember going to any of these, even if it was just for some other kid's birthday party. Unfortunately some of the only mentions about a place are reports of a crime being committed there, such as our first few examples.
Forgotten Arcade #1
Fun House/Play Time Arcade - 2820 Guadalupe
June 15, 1975

ARCADE ENTHUSIASM
A gang fight involving 20 30 people erupted early Saturday morning in front of an arcade on Guadalupe Street. The owner of the Fun House Arcade at 282J Guadalupe told police pool cues, lug wrenches, fists and a shotgun were displayed during the flurry. Police are unsure what started the fisticuffs, but one witness at the scene said it pitted Chicanos against Anglos. During the fight the owner of the arcade said a green car stopped at the side of the arcade and witnesses reported the barrel of a shotgun sticking out. The crowd wisely scattered and only a 23-year-old man was left lying on the ground. He told police he doesn't know what happened.

March 3, 1976

ARCADE ROBBED
A former employee of Play Time Arcade, 2820 Guadalupe, was charged Tuesday in connection with the Tuesday afternoon robbery of his former business. Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Ronnie Magee, 22, of 1009 Aggie Lane, Apt. 306. Arcade attendant Sam Garner said he had played pool with the suspect an hour before the robbery. He told police the man had been fired from the business two weeks earlier. Police said a man walked in the arcade about 2:45 p m. with a blue steel pistol and took $180. Magee is charged with first degree aggravated robbery. Bond was set on the charge at $15,000.

First it was called Fun House and then renamed Play Time a year later. I'm not sure what kind of arcade games beyond Pong and maybe Asteroids they could have had at this place. The peak of the Pinball craze was supposed to be around 1979, so they might have had a few pinball machines as well. A quick search of youtube will show you a few examples of 1976 video games like Death Race. The location is next to Ken's Donuts where PokeBowl is today where the old Baskin Robbins location was for many years.
Forgotten Arcade #2
Green Goth - 1121 Springdale Road
May 15, 1984

A 23-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to a January 1983 murder in East Austin and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Jim Crowell Jr. of Austin admitted shooting 17-year-old Anthony Rodriguez in the chest with a shotgun after the two argued outside the Green Goth, a games arcade at 1121 Springdale Road, on Jan. 23, 1983. Crowell had argued with Rodriguez and a friend of Rodriguez at the arcade, police said. Crowell then went to his house, got a shotgun and returned to the arcade, witnesses said. When the two friends left the arcade, Rodriguez was shot Several weeks ago Crowell had reached a plea bargain with prosecutors for an eight-year prison term, but District Judge Bob Perkins would not accept the sentence, saying it was shorter than sentences in similar cases. After further plea bargaining, Crowell accepted the 15-year prison sentence.

I can't find anything else on Green Goth except reports about this incident with a murder there. There is at least one other report from 1983 around the time of Crowell's arrest that also refer to it as an arcade but reports the manager said the argument started over a game of pool. It's possible this place might have been more known for pool.
Forgotten Arcades #3 & #4
Games, Etc. - 1302 S. First St
Muther's Arcade - 2532 Guadalupe St
August 23, 1983

Losing the magic touch - Video Arcades have trouble winning the money game
It was going to be so easy for Lawrence Villegas, a video game junkie who thought he could make a fast buck by opening up an arcade where kids could plunk down an endless supply of quarters to play Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids. Villegas got together with a few friends, purchased about 30 video games and opened Games, Etc. at 1302 S. First St in 1980. .,--.... For a while, things, went great Kids waited in line to spend their money to drive race cars, slay dragons and save the universe.
AT THE BEGINNING of 1982, however, the bottom fell out, and Villegas' revenues fell from $400 a week to $25. Today, Games, Etc. is vacant Villegas, 30, who is now working for his parents at Tony's Tortilla Factory, hasn't decided what he'll do with the building. "I was hooked on Asteroids, and I opened the business to get other people hooked, too," Villegas said. "But people started getting bored, and it wasn't worth keeping the place open. In the end, I sold some machines for so little it made me sick."
VILLEGAS ISNT the only video game operator to experience hard times, video game manufacturers and distributors 'It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100 .
Pac-Man's a lost cause. Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Ronnie Roark says. In the past year, business has dropped 25 percent to 65 percent throughout the country, they say. Most predict business will get even worse before the market stabilizes. Video game manufacturers and operators say there are several reasons for the sharp and rapid decline: Many video games can now be played at home on television, so there's no reason to go to an arcade. The novelty of video games has worn off. It has been more than a decade since the first ones hit the market The decline can be traced directly to oversaturation or the market arcade owners say. The number of games in Austin has quadrupled since 1981, and it's not uncommon to see them in coin-operated laundries, convenience stores and restaurants.
WITH SO MANY games to choose from, local operators say, Austinites be came bored. Arcades still take in thousands of dollars each week, but managers and owners say most of the money is going to a select group of newer games, while dozens of others sit idle.
"After awhile, they all seem the same," said Dan Moyed, 22, as he relaxed at Muther's Arcade at 2532 Guadalupe St "You get to know what the game is going to do before it does. You can play without even thinking about it" Arcade owners say that that, in a nutshell, is why the market is stagnating.
IN THE PAST 18 months, Ronnie Roark, owner of the Back Room at 2015 E. Riverside Drive, said his video business has dropped 65 to 75 percent Roark, . who supplied about 160 video games to several Austin bars and arcades, said the instant success of the games is what led to their demise. "The technology is not keeping up with people's demand for change," said Roark, who bought his first video game in 1972. "The average game is popular for two or three months. We're sending back games that are less than five months old."
Roark said the market began dropping in March 1982 and has been declining steadily ever since. "The drop started before University of Texas students left for the summer in 1982," Roark said. "We expected a 25 percent drop in business, and we got that, and more. It's never really picked up since then. - "It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100. 1 was shocked when I looked over my books and saw how much things had dropped."
TO COMBAT THE slump, Roark said, he and some arcade owners last year cut the price of playing. Even that didn't help, he said. Old favorites, such as Pac-Man, which once took in hundreds of dollars each week, he said, now make less than $3 each. "Pac-Man's a lost cause," he said. "Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Hardest hit by the slump are the owners of the machines, who pay $3,500 to $5,000 for new products and split the proceeds with the businesses that house them.
SALEM JOSEPH, owner of Austin Amusement and Vending Co., said his business is off 40 percent in the past year. Worse yet, some of his customers began returning their machines, and he's having a hard time putting them back in service. "Two years ago, a machine would generate enough money to pay for itself in six months,' said Joseph, who supplies about 250 games to arcades. "Now that same machine takes 18 months to pay for itself." As a result, Joseph said, he'll buy fewer than 15 new machines this year, down from the 30 to 50 he used to buy. And about 50 machines are sitting idle in his warehouse.
"I get calls every day from people who want to sell me their machines," Joseph said. "But I can't buy them. The manufacturers won't buy them from me." ARCADE OWNERS and game manufacturers hope the advent of laser disc video games will buoy the market Don Osborne, vice president of marketing for Atari, one of the largest manufacturers of video games, said he expects laser disc games to bring a 25 percent increase in revenues next year. The new games are programmed to give players choices that may affect the outcome of the game, Os borne said. "Like the record and movie industries, the video game industry is dependent on products that stimulate the imagination," Osborne said "One of the reasons we're in a valley is that we weren't coming up with those kinds of products."
THE FIRST of the laser dis games, Dragonslayer and Star Wan hit the market about two months ago. Noel Kerns, assistant manager of The Gold Mine Arcade in Northcross Mall, says the new games are responsible for a $l,000-a-week increase in revenues. Still, Kerns said, the Gold Mine' total sales are down 20 percent iron last summer. However, he remain optimistic about the future of the video game industry. "Where else can you come out of the rain and drive a Formula One race car or save the universe?" hi asked.
Others aren't so optimistic. Roark predicted the slump will force half of all operators out of business and will last two more years. "Right now, we've got a great sup ply and almost no demand," Roark said. "That's going to have to change before things get- significantly better."

Well there is a lot to take from that long article, among other things, that the author confused "Dragonslayer" with "Dragon's Lair". I lol'd.
Anyone who has been to Emo's East, formerly known as The Back Room, knows they have arcade games and pool, but it's mostly closed when there isn't a show. That shouldn't count as an arcade, even though the former owner Ronnie Roark was apparently one of the top suppliers of cabinet games to the area during the Golden Era. Any pool hall probably had a few arcade games at the time, too, but that's not the same as being an arcade.
We also learn from the same article of two forgotten arcades: Muthers at 2522 Guadalupe where today there is a Mediterranean food restaurant, and another called Games, Etc. at 1302 S.First that today is the site of an El Mercado restaurant. But the article is mostly about showing us how bad the effects were from the crash at the end of the Golden Era. It was very hard for the early arcades to survive with increasing competition from home game consoles and personal computers, and the proliferation of the games into stores and restaurants.
Forgotten Arcades #5 #6 & #7
Computer Madness - 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Electronic Encounters - 1701 W Ben White Blvd (Southwood Mall)
The Outer Limits Amusements Center - 1409 W. Oltorf
March 4, 1982

'Quartermania' stalks South Austin
School officials, parents worried about effects of video games
A fear Is haunting the video game business. "We call it 'quartermania.' That's fear of running out of quarters," said Steve Stackable, co-owner of Computer Madness, a video game and foosball arcade at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd. The "quartermania" fear extends to South Austin households and schools, as well. There it's a fear of students running out of lunch money and classes to play the games. Local school officials and Austin police are monitoring the craze. They're concerned that computer hotspots could become undesirable "hangouts" for students, or that truancy could increase because students (high-school age and younger) will skip school to defend their galaxies against The Tempest.
So far police fears have not been substantiated. Department spokesmen say that although more than half the burglaries in the city are committed by juveniles during the daytime, they know of no connection between the break-ins and kids trying to feed their video habit But school and parental worries about misspent time and money continue. The public outcry in September 1980 against proposals to put electronic game arcades near two South Austin schools helped persuade city officials to reject the applications. One proposed location was near Barton Hills Elementary School. The other was South Ridge Plaza at William Cannon Drive and South First Street across from Bedlchek Junior High School.
Bedichek principal B.G. Henry said he spoke against the arcade because "of the potential attraction it had for our kids. I personally feel kids are so drawn to these things, that It might encourage them to leave the school building and play hookey. Those things have so much compulsion, kids are drawn to them like a magnet Kids can get addicted to them and throw away money, maybe their lunch money. I'm not against the video games. They may be beneficial with eye-hand coordination or even with mathematics, but when you mix the video games during school hours and near school buildings, you might be asking for problems you don't need."
A contingent from nearby Pleasant Hill Elementary School joined Bedichek in the fight back in 1980, although principal Kay Beyer said she received her first formal call about the games last Week from a mother complaining that her child was spending lunch money on them. Beyer added that no truancy problems have been related to video game-playing at a nearby 7-11 store. Allen Poehl, amusement game coordinator for Austin's 7-11 stores, said company policy rules out any game-playing by school-age youth during school hours. Fulmore Junior High principal Bill Armentrout said he is working closely with operators of a nearby 7-1 1 store to make sure their policy is enforced.
The convenience store itself, and not necessarily the video games, is a drawing card for older students and drop-outs, Armentrout said. Porter Junior High principal Marjorie Ball said that while video games aren't a big cause of truancy, "the money (spent on the games) is a big factor." Ball said she has made arrangements with nearby businesses to call the school it students are playing the games during school hours. "My concern is that kids are basically unsupervised, especially at the 24-hour grocery stores. That's a late hour for kids to be out. I would like to see them (games) unplugged at 10 p.m.," adds Joslin Elementary principal Wayne Rider.
Several proprietors of video game hot-spots say they sympathize with the concerns of parents and school officials. No one under 18 is admitted without a parent to Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre at 4211 S. Lamar. That rule, says night manager David Dunagan, "keeps it from being a high school hangout. This is a family place." Jerry Zollar, owner of J.J. Subs in West Wood Shopping Center on Bee Cave Road, rewards the A's on the report cards of Eanes school district students with free video games. "It's kind of a community thing we do in a different way. I've heard from both teachers and parents . . . they thought this was a good idea," said Zollar.
Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall last year was renovated into a brightly lit arcade. "We're trying to get away from the dark, barroom-type place. We want this to be a place for family entertainment We won't let kids stay here during school hours without a written note from their parents, and we're pretty strict about that," said manager Kelly Roberts. Joyce Houston, who manages The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf St. along with her husband, said, "I wouldn't let my children go into some of the arcades I've visited. I'm a concerned parent, too. We wanted a place where the whole family could come and enjoy themselves."

Well you can see which way the tone of all these articles is going. There were some crimes committed at some arcades but all of them tended to have a negative reputation for various reasons. Parents and teachers were very skeptical of the arcades being in the neighborhoods to the point of petitioning the City Government to restrict them. Three arcades are mentioned besides Chuck-E-Cheese. Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall, The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf, and Computer Madness, a "video game and foosball arcade" at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Forgotten Arcade #8
Smitty's Galaxy of Games - Lake Creek Parkway
February 25, 1982

Arcades fighting negative image
Video games have swept across America, and Williamson and Travis counties have not been immune. In a two-part series, Neighbor examines the effects the coin-operated machines have had on suburban and small-town life.
Cities have outlawed them, religious leaders have denounced them and distraught mothers have lost countless children to their voracious appetites. And still they march on, stronger and more numerous than before. A new disease? Maybe. A wave of invading aliens from outer space? On occasion. A new type of addiction? Certainly. The culprit? Video games. Although the electronic game explosion has been mushrooming throughout the nation's urban areas for the past few years, its rippling effects have just recently been felt in the suburban fringes of North Austin and Williamson County.
In the past year, at least seven arcades armed with dozens of neon quarter-snatchers have sprung up to lure teens with thundering noises and thousands of flashing seek-and-destroy commands. Critics say arcades are dens of iniquity where children fall prey to the evils of gambling. But arcade owners say something entirely different. "Everybody fights them (arcades), they think they are a haven for drug addicts. It's just not true," said Larry Grant of Austin, who opened Eagle's Nest Fun and Games on North Austin Avenue in Georgetown last September. "These kids are great" Grant said the gameroom "gives teenagers a place to come. Some only play the games and some only talk.
In Georgetown, if you're from the high school, this is it." He said he's had very few disturbances, and asks "undesirables" to leave. "We've had a couple of rowdies. That's why I don't have any pool tables they tend to attract that type of crowd," Grant said.
Providing a place for teens to congregate was also the reason behind Ron and Carol Smith's decision to open Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway at the entrance to Anderson Mill. "We have three teenage sons, and as soon as the oldest could drive, it became immediately apparent that there was no place to go around here," said Ron, an IBM employee who lives in Spicewood at Balcones. "This prompted us to want to open something." The business, which opened in August, has been a huge success with both parents and youngsters. "Hundreds of parents have come to check out our establishment before allowing their children to come, and what they see is a clean, safe environment managed by adults and parents," Ron said. "We've developed an outstanding rapport with the community." Video arcades "have a reputation that we have to fight," said Carol.
Kathy McCoy of Georgetown, who last October opened Krazy Korner on Willis Street in Leander, agrees. "We've got a real good group of kids," she said. "There's no violence, no nothing. Parents can always find their kids at Krazy Korner."
While all the arcade owners contacted reported that business is healthy, if not necessarily lucrative, it's not as easy for video entrepreneurs to turn a profit as one might imagine. A sizeable investment is required. Ron Smith paid between $2,800 and $5,000 for each of the 30 electronic diversions at his gameroom.
Grant said his average video game grosses about $50 a week, and his "absolute worst" game, Armor Attack, only $20 a week. The top machines (Defender and Pac-Man) can suck in an easy $125 a week. That's a lot of quarters, 500 to be exact but the Eagle's Nest and Krazy Korner pass half of them on to Neelley Vending Company of Austin which rents them their machines. "At 25 cents a shot, it takes an awful lot of people to pay the bills," said Tom Hatfield, district manager for Neelley.
He added that an owner's personality and the arcade's location can make or break the venture. The game parlor must be run "by an understanding person, someone with patience," Hatfield said. "They cannot be too demanding on the kids, yet they can't let them run all over them." And they must be located in a spot "with lots of foot traffic," such as a shopping center or near a good restaurant, he said. "And being close to a school really helps." "Video games are going to be here permanently, but we're going to see some operations not going because of the competition," which includes machines in virtually every convenience store and supermarket, Hatfield said.

This article talks about three arcades. One in Georgetown called Eagles Nest, another in Leander called Krazy Korner, and a third called Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway "on the fringes of North Austin". This is the one I remember the older kids talking about when I was a little kid. There was once a movie theater across the street from the Westwood High School football stadium and behind that was Smitty's. Today I think the building was bulldozed long ago and the space is part of the expanded onramp to 183 today. Eventually another unrelated arcade was built next to the theater that became Alamo Lakeline. It was another site of some unrecorded epic Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat tournaments in the 90s.
But the article written before the end of the Golden Era tell us much about the pushback I was talking about earlier. Early arcades were seen as "dirty" places in some circles, and the owners of the arcades in Williamson County had to stress how "clean" their establishments were. This other article from a couple of weeks later tells of how area school officials weren't worried about video games and tells us more arcades in Round Rock and Cedar Park. Apparently the end of the golden age lasted a bit longer than usual in this area.
At some point in the next few years the bubble burst, and places like Smitty's were gone by the late 80s. But the distributors quoted earlier were right that arcade games weren't going completely away. In the mid 1980s LeFun opened up next in the Scientology building at 2200 Guadalupe on the drag. Down a few doors past what used be a coffee shop and a CVS was Einsteins Arcade. Both of those survived into the 21st century. I remember the last time I was at Einsteins I got my ass beat in Tekken by a kid half my age. heheh
That's all for today. There were no Bonus Pics in the UT archive of arcades (other than the classical architectural definition). I wanted to pass on some Bonus newspaper articles (remember to click and zoom in with the buttons on the right to read) about Austin arcades anyway but first a small story.
I mentioned earlier the secret of the UT Student Union. I have no idea what it looks like now but in the 90s there was a sizable arcade in with the bowling alley in the basement. Back in 1994 when I used to sneak in, they featured this bizarre early attempt at virtual reality games. I found an old Michael Barnes Statesman article about it dated February 11, 1994. Some highlights:

Hundreds of students and curiosity-seekers lined up at the University of Texas Union to play three to five minutes of Dactyl Nightmare, Flying Aces or V-Tol, three-dimensional games from Kramer Entertainment. Nasty weather delayed the unloading of four huge trunks containing the machines, which resemble low pulpits. Still, players waited intently for a chance to shoot down a fighter jet, operate a tilt-wing Harrier or tangle with a pterodactyl. Today, tickets will go on sale in the Texas Union lobby at 11:30 a.m. for playing slots between noon and 6 p.m.
Players, fitted with full helmets, throttles and power packs, stood on shiny gray and yellow platforms surrounded by a circular guard rail. Seen behind the helmet's goggles were computer simulated landscapes, not unlike the most sophisticated video games, with controls and enemies viewed in deep space. "You're on a platform waiting to fight a human figure," said Jeff Vaughn, 19, of Dactyl Nightmare. "A pterodactyl swoops down and tries to pick you up. You have to fight it off. You are in the space and can see your own body and all around you. But if you try to walk, you have to use that joy stick to get around."
"I let the pterodactyl carry me away so I could look down and scan the board," said Tom Bowen of the same game. "That was the way I found out where the other player was." "Yeah, it's cool just to stand there and not do anything," Vaughn said. The mostly young, mostly male crowd included the usual gaming fanatics, looking haggard and tense behind glasses and beards. A smattering of women and children also pressed forward in a line that snaked past the lobby and into the Union's retail shops.
"I don't know why more women don't play. Maybe because the games are so violent," said Jennifer Webb, 24, a psychology major whose poor eyesight kept her from becoming a fighter pilot in real life. "If the Air Force won't take me, virtual reality will." "They use stereo optics moving at something like 60 frames a second," said computer science major Alex Aquila, 19. "The images are still pretty blocky. But once you play it, you'll want to play it again and again." With such demand for virtual reality, some gamesters wondered why an Austin video arcade has not invested in at least one machine.

The gameplay looked like this.
Bonus Article #1 - "Video fans play for own reasons" (Malibu Grand Prix) - March 11, 1982
Bonus Article #2 - "Pac-Man Cartridge Piques Interest" - April 13, 1982
Bonus Article #3 - "Video Games Fail Consumer" - January 29, 1984
Bonus Article #4 - "Nintendoholics/Modems Unite" - January 25, 1989
Bonus Article #5 and pt 2 "Two girls missing for a night found at arcade" (truly dedicated young gamers) - August 7, 2003

GME: The Long Thesis and Hopeful Return to Sanity

The ECP is stupid, let's plan production.

It's not a debate about whether to plan things. It never has been. Things are already planned and that's how conservatives like it. The question is how things should be planned and by whom. In capitalism, production is planned by the rich, who have no goal in mind but their own profit. To frame the debate as though it were about capitalism versus central planning, like attempts at characterizing capitalism as an 'emergent order,' has only ever been propaganda for the rich.
Why can't things be run differently? In 1920, an economist tried to devise an answer when he wrote about the economic calculation problem (ECP). To make economic decisions requires we have a common value to compare things by. How else do we know what to produce? A shipment of steel could be used to make cars. It could also make pipes, or microwaves, or any other number of things. How do we decide? There isn't a simple, objective answer you could produce in a lab test. It's a matter of finding the right proportion of what everybody wants. So the critical question is, what do people want? How do we determine that? The argument people are making when they invoke the ECP is a socialist economy couldn't determine this, and will thus always mismanage resources. (This is the origin of the 'commie no food' meme.)
The capitalist price system does provide some information about demand, as prices do reflect how real people are spending their money and thus implies an expression of preference. But how much information this actually produces is exaggerated, along with just how meaningful that information is, while its various problems and shortcomings are swept under the rug. Ludwig von Mises, the economist who first described the ECP, meanwhile does nothing to make the case for why no other method to gauge demand is feasible. He asserts the price system itself couldn't be replicated in socialism, but only because his grasp of socialism was basically if one big company bought the whole economy and prices were arbitrarily set by bureaucrats sitting in a room somewhere. The only point he made in the end is planning requires information, which is mundane.
There's numerous ways to gauge demand. The one I'm most interested is just plainly asking, which I have no problem calling the survey method. Take a random sample of the population every so often, have them rank things by importance. That's it. It would create the same type of information as the price system currently does, if not better. What interests me about this method is its simplicity. It could of course be built upon and expanded over time, and other methods could be incorporated in addition to it, but a general belief of mine is that movements require simple ideas as their foundation, and on this subject I can think of nothing more straightforward and easy to understand than 'to determine what people want, ask them.' It's the ideal starting point.
A big objection I always hear to this idea is people wouldn't answer realistically. People would say they want caviar and lobster every meal, or something like that. But obviously we could present choices and trade-offs in such a way that reflects how difficult things are to provide. It's not a choice between bread and lobster, it's a choice between lots of bread and some lobster, because lobster takes more labour and resources to obtain. The suggestion we couldn't figure out something so basic helps to betray how much of the 'skepticism' about socialism is just dull status-quo bias. The argument is practically 'an idea must be bad if I can imagine it being implemented poorly.'
The other big objection is people don't know what they want. After all, how they reply to a survey doesn't always align with how people really behave. And I suppose that's true, but I also don't accept that it's a disadvantage. In fact, I assert the opposite. This objection touches on a big reason why socialist planning would be so advantageous.
There are those who think what people say they want can be discarded. It's what people do, in practice, that matters. To put that differently, it's not people's stated preference that we should care about, but only their revealed preference. That's what reflects our true desires. To put it mildly, this couldn't be more wrong.
If asked clearly and given time to think and produce a deliberate answer, what people say they want is a much better way to determine their values than observing what they do when put in a system designed to influence their behaviour otherwise. The simplest example: a person can be on a diet and want to lose weight, but if we leave a box of doughnuts in the break room every day their behaviour might not reflect that.
And the capitalist economy is one big 'break room with a box of doughnuts.' It's an environment we have no control of, built to modify our behaviour in whatever way is most profitable for the rich. There's obviously a significant disconnect between what people truly want from life and how they end up behaving in capitalism, and to suggest that's not a problem because however they behave is their 'true selves' is an astoundingly stupid oversimplification of human behaviour. It's logically akin to arguing drug addiction isn't a problem because the addict chooses to keep doing drugs, which proves that must be what they want.
Most people fall into traps they'd vote against if they could. Like how supermarkets put all those impulse-buy candies and chocolates near the checkout till, or put common staples like rick, milk, or eggs at the very back of the store to ensure you have to walk through all the aisle to get to them. CostCo, the second largest retailer in the world, regularly moves all their inventory around for no fucking reason beyond ensuring people don't know where anything is and they have to wander around the store looking for stuff, because that way they're forced to walk by and look at more products, and on average end up buying more. Can you imagine if we had an economy that was designed to be efficient, instead of there being whole industries dedicated to this kind of manipulative bullshit?
And capitalists love peddling addiction. Tobacco isn't as cool as it used to be in the West, but it's still a huge problem in some countries, and nicotine products are making a comeback. Meanwhile, alcohol is still going strong. Where I live, they've been putting beer and wine in supermarkets now, predictably always near checkout. And let's not forget sugar and caffeine are highly addictive, and many products have both, including products marketed to children. Did you know in the USA, obesity has doubled over the last two decades?
Gambling can be addictive. That includes not only predatory bullshit like casinos and lotteries (which should all be burned to the ground), but an increasingly large part of the video game industry, as developers incorporate more and more gambling elements into popular titles to better manipulate people into spending money they'll regret.
Pornography is addictive. Food in general can be an addiction. Arguably shopping, consumption, the thrill of going out and spending money and getting to open new things, can itself be an addiction.
This could veer off into a debate about when exactly a behaviour becomes an addiction, but the exact application of that terminology is far from the point. No, the point is how in the moment of consumption, people aren't as rational and in-control-of-things as it's convenient to portray them. So much of our consumption is impulsive, irrational, and manipulated for the benefit of producers. A system where normal people were able to exert actual control over production would naturally be much, much better at determining what things people truly value than what we have.
And as far as I could tell that was the best critique of the survey idea they could muster.

I am 35 years old, make $56,000 ($231k combined), live in Seattle, and work in higher ed administration

Note: I was technically supposed to post this earlier this week, but noticed that no one was signed up for today (plus I was super busy earlier), so I'm posting a bit late, under a throwaway account! Fair warning: I'm VERY verbose, so this will be long!
Section One: Assets and Debt
As I mentioned above, I make $56k per year as an administrator in higher education. My husband (K) just got a raise to making $155k per year. He works as a lawyer, has been in the workforce for about 12 years. I won't get into too many details but he works for a small boutique firm, not Biglaw. He also sometimes gets a yearly bonus of around $10k-20k but it's not guaranteed or anything like that. K and I have totally combined finances, so the below numbers are for both of us. I have a humanities PhD but I decided to leave academia and find an alt-ac job. My current position has good work-life balance (I never work past 5 pm), but pays terribly and my university is very badly run. I'm hoping to leave higher education all together in the future and am currently enrolled in a certificate program to try to make a career transition to instructional design.
The big elephant in the room is that my husband, K, makes a lot more money than me. When we first met, he was paying off massive amounts of student loans and making much less, and I was debt free with a lot of savings, so we both spent about the same amount. Now he makes 3x what I make and we are both debt-free, so the difference is much more noticeable. We do argue about money sometimes (more in the past), but the reality is that I have a humanities PhD and will likely never out earn him, and he knew that when I married him, lol. Because of all the labor I do around the house and in our lives to support him as he works a much more intense job, I was very clear that I believed we should split our finances equally as soon as we got married. We don't have separate accounts and we generally check in with one another whenever we are planning to spend more than $100. This system works for us for now.
I also want to address the question about parental or family support. Although I technically paid all of my own bills since I got my Bachelor's degree, my parents supported me a lot by paying for my flights home to visit at Christmas or in the summer as Xmas presents/birthday presents. My parents also paid for my undergraduate degree (and K's parents paid for his undergraduate degree as well). They also gave us about $15k to pay for our wedding.
Finally, my parents recently gave me $20k as an "early inheritance." They told me they plan to do this every year (depending on the stock market). We put this money into a brokerage. I don't consider my parents rich, as they both worked hourly jobs in health care my entire life (as a nurse and respiratory therapist - both with only associate's degrees). We never owned a new car, when we went on vacation we stayed in hostels , and shopped almost exclusively at Goodwill. But they scrimped and saved and now they have over $1 million in a retirement account. So I want to acknowledge my financial privilege in that I came from this kind of background. K's parents are similar.
Retirement Balance: $186k (combination of 401k, 403b, 457, 2 Roth IRAs, and taxable brokerage account).
Equity: None, we rent.
Savings account balance: Approximately $45k.
Checking account balance: Right now, around 8k.
Credit card debt: Right now, around $3k. But we pay it off each month with our checking account balance.
Student loan debt: $0. We finally paid off my husband’s law school loans (around $130k), last year. I didn’t have any student loans from undergrad (parents paid) and my MA & PhD were fully funded.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I’ve been working in my current field for 3 years. I started off making about $53k and got tiny 2% “merit increases” twice. Then in July my payroll title was changed, which triggered a required raise of about $2k. (I am dramatically underpaid).
Before my current position, I was in academia. I worked as a visiting assistant professor for one year at my alma mater (made $50k for 9 months of work) and before that I was a graduate student for 7 years. I was paid $18k-21k in stipends each year and my tuition & benefits were covered. Luckily, I lived in a very low cost of living area and this was enough for me to live on without going into debt. I got my PhD in 2017. Before I was a graduate student, I taught English in Japan for three years and made around $36k per year. In high school and college, I had random jobs that provided grocery/spending money, but I was lucky enough to have parents that paid my tuition and my rent in college.
I’m currently trying to make a career change (as you will see in my diary) and enrolled in a certificate program which runs from Autumn 2020 to Spring 2021 in order to help with that.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $7,634. This probably seems low relative to our joint income, but we max out our 401k (K) and 403b (me). I work for the state government, which means I’m also eligible for something called a Deferred Compensation Plan (457b). This is basically the same as a 401k but you can withdraw contributions and gains from the account at any age without penalty (of course, you still have to pay taxes). I also max this out, and the limit is the same as a 401k/403b - $19.5k. Also this number is before K’s raise is accounted for. It won’t increase until his end of February paycheck.
Other deductions - I have health insurance taken out (about $80 a month for me, K’s firm covers his premiums) and taxes. WA has no state taxes, so it’s only federal taxes. I used to have to pay $50 / month for a bus pass (K's was free), but I don’t pay any longer because I’m working from home during COVID.
Final note - the sum I mentioned in the headline includes a variable bonus my husband gets. My base pay is $56k and his is $155k (as of February 1). This year he also got a bonus of $20k, which is set up a bit strangely. About $4k of this was structured as a 3% matching contribution to his 401k and the rest was taxable income. In small law firms, it’s unusual to get any 401k match so this was nice.
Side Gig Monthly Take Home: None.
Any Other Monthly Income Here: We get some interest from our savings account… like $25 a month.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent: Rent comes to approximately $2,050 total for a one-bedroom apartment. Rent itself is $1886, then we have pet rent ($25 per month), bicycle parking ($15 a month) and water / sewage / gas, which is usually $120-150 (variable cost).
Renters insurance: $157.76, paid annually. $13 a month.
Retirement contribution: In addition to the 401k, 403b, and 457, which all come out before taxes, we max out our Roth IRAs. That means $500 each per month per person (for a yearly total of $6k each). As I noted up top, we match out our 401k and 403b (19,500 each) and our 457. My employee also offers a 7.5% match. K's employee offers a 3% match but it is included in his yearly bonus so it's not guaranteed (confusing).
Savings contribution: We put $500 per month into our emergency fund. We also put about $860 a month into our “sinking fund,” which covers large and small annual or sporadic purchases such as vacations, gifts, Amazon Prime renewal, car insurance and renters insurance, etc.
Investment contribution: $875 per month into a taxable brokerage at Vanguard.
In total, we save about 47% of our gross income. We can do this because we keep our housing cost low relative to our high income, we don’t have any debt remaining, we don’t have any kids or parents who need financial support, and we’re very privileged in a lot of ways. We are hoping to FIRE within 10 years.
Debt payments: None.
Donations: We budget $100 per month for donations, which includes one-time donations as well as some reoccurring donations. My husband does pro bono work as well. I would like to increase this by quite a bit, but I still have a hard time budgeting for donations because I spent 7 years living on approximately $20k a year. To go from that to making more than 10x that amount within 3-4 years is obviously something that I am very privileged for, but it is still hard for me emotionally to comprehend at times.
Electric: ~$50-100 (billed every other month)
Wifi/Cable/Landline: An extortionate $87.12 for slow internet that only works for Zoom calls about half the time. Do I really live in one of the tech cities of the future?
Cellphone: $170 (This includes both service and paying off two new iPhones. We could have paid them off up front, but it was actually cheaper by like $50 to go on a payment plan.)
Subscriptions: BritBox ($7.70), Spotify ($16.50), HBOMax ($16.50), We Hate Movies Patreon (my favorite podcast - $8.81). My parents pay for Netflix and my sister pays for Hulu, and we all share.
Gym membership: None. K and I both run and do yoga with YouTube videos. Before the pandemic, we went to yoga classes pretty frequently in person. I’d like to do some online synchronous yoga classes but find it hard to make time.
Pet expenses: Varies, but I budget $50 per month and also include an emergency fund for my cat’s vet bills in our sinking fund. She’s 11 years old and probably asthmatic, so I know her vet bills are going to increase over time.
Car payment / insurance: We own our car outright. Insurance billed yearly is $2,097, about $174 per month.
Regular therapy: $0
Paid hobbies: Nothing regular, sporadic language classes and art supplies.
Other expenses: Right now I’m doing a certificate to hopefully help with a career change. The total cost for tuition is about $5k and we already saved it up (included in our 'sinking fund') basically through spending less during the pandemic. I’ve paid two quarters so far, and the last quarter (due in March) will be a bit more - about $2.3k.
__________
Day 1
Morning: I wake up at 5:30 am. Ever since the pandemic, my sleep schedule has been shot. At first, I was so happy not to have to leave the house at 7:15 for my 45 minute bus commute and I slept in a lot. But the stress (and maybe getting old?) has made me an early riser, no matter how much I try to sleep in. I do value my early mornings with just me, my cat, and my coffee, though.
I start work at 8 am and begin by triaging my emails. I have a bunch of deadlines this week, so it’s busier than usual. My job tends to be very seasonal, and sometimes I have a ton of work and sometimes I have none and can work on other longer-term projects. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and place a Whole Foods delivery order for the following day at 10:30 am. We made a meal plan and put everything in the cart the day before ($117.36, including tip).
Afternoon: I have my lunch break from noon to 1 pm. It doesn’t really matter when I take my lunch break, since I’m salaried, but the others in my office are hourly so in the before times we used to always close our office during the same time. I have a piece of leftover delivery pizza and some spinach risotto that I made a few days earlier. I also have half a brownie – the last one from a batch I made a few days ago (K gets the other half). He also has leftovers for lunch.
I should say at this point that both K and I are lucky enough to have been working almost entirely from home since early March. An area near Seattle was one of the first places to get hit by COVID-19, and my state and both of our employers have been taking it very seriously ever since. Working from home hasn’t always been easy since we live in a 600-square foot apartment. Also, there is a three-story townhouse being built directly next door to us and I can hear the pounding in my dreams at this point.
Around 2 pm, I go for a 2-mile run. I feel like some money diarists tend to toss off things like “oh, I went for an easy 7 mile run,” at the drop of a hat, so I want to be clear – running for 2 miles isn’t easy for me; it’s exhausting, annoying, sweaty, and generally gross. Also I am very slow. But it has kept me sane during quarantine.
Meanwhile, my husband goes to our local pet store to get an enzymatic cleaner (our cat peed in one of our suitcases… I think it’s probably a lost cause, but it was basically brand new, so worth a try) and special weight-loss cat food. Our cat is an 11-year-old rescue from the Humane Society and she is a chonky girl. We had to sign a waiver when we adopted her, saying that we understood that she was very overweight, lol. Our vet recommended a special diet food, rather than just restricting her intake as we have been doing, so we will give it a try ($78). My husband also stops buy our local wine store and picks up two bottles. We’ve been doing a dry January, so this will be our first drink for a while ($27.53).
I have a phone interview scheduled for 4 pm – just a preliminary interview with an internal recruiter. It’s the first ‘corporate’ job interview I’ve ever had, since I’ve been in academia my entire life. I’m trying to make a pivot into instructional design / training and development. I’m just excited to get an interview. It seems to go pretty well, but who knows. They tell me they will probably get back to me by the end of this week.
Evening: My husband whips up a random meal of fridge remnants – pesto pasta with sausage and a fridge salad with feta and bell peppers. It’s pretty tasty with a little Sauvignon Blanc. During dinner, we play a card game we call gin rummy, although it bears no resemblance to the actual game. After dinner, I make a chocolate cake with orange buttercream frosting and we watch Cobra Kai.
Daily total: $222.89
Day 2
Morning: Up early again, a piece of toast for breakfast (very exciting). We’re out of eggs until our Whole Foods order arrives. I’m working on creating some tedious but necessary spreadsheets this morning.
Noon: Our Whole Foods order arrives around noon. Excitement! They’ve given us a half-rotten bag of romaine lettuce and substituted pecans for hazelnuts. I should probably just double mask and go to Trader Joe’s myself (our regular spot, only a 5-minute walk from my apartment). I’m just getting anxious about these new variants.
I have leftover meatloaf and spinach risotto again for lunch. Lots of meetings and more organizing spreadsheets in the afternoon. Around 3 pm, I go for my daily ritual - a 20-minute walk around my neighborhood. It’s still raining slightly but I need to get out. Halfway through the walk, I get an email from my apartment manager telling me the apartment will no longer accept debit card payments, direct deposit, or credit card payments for paying rent. In other words, only checks or money orders (?!). Ugh. Our lease is up in 4 months and we will not be renewing our lease. Our last apartment manager was a gambling addict who may have been stealing people’s identities, but by God, he kept things working. Ever since they fired him, this place has been going downhill.
Evening: I check my bank statements to update my budget spreadsheet and realize that I have been billed the wrong amount of rent. They actually charged me less than they should have. I don’t trust my apartment manager not to start charging me a late fee or something for this, so I call them up. They are baffled by how to fix this, which you would think would be the one thing you would want to get right, if you’re renting out apartments.
K cooks dinner – steak with a Roquefort sauce and glazed brussels sprouts. It’s from a French cookbook we recently bought and it is delicious. I work on classwork for my certificate program while he cooks. After dinner, I do the dishes and buy the 13th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I watch the first episode – lots of shocking twists and turns! I’m planning to watch the rest of the episodes together with my younger sister, M ($22.01).
Daily total: $22.01
Day 3
Morning: K has an 8 am dentist appointment, so he takes off early. He already paid for the work last month, so there’s no charge. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and get to work checking my emails. It’s 8:20 am and the construction crew building a townhouse next door is blasting mariachi music. I’m glad someone is having fun. At least the sun is coming out.
Someone at work has made a critical error, but it wasn’t me, thank God. I was the one who found out about it, but it’s still going to cause a big old headache for me. I’m ready to be done with this job. K and I go for a run so that I can exhaust myself enough to no longer be furious about said careless error.
Noon: I have leftover spinach risotto and meatloaf again – exciting. I’m busy at work but frankly, not a lot going on other than that. Still no word about fixing my rent payments. I’m not really willing to pursue this any further at this point.
Evening: I start making chili (Turkey Chili from the NY Times) and cornbread (from my new cookbook, Jubilee). K is doing some work on our investments when he announces that, somehow, a transfer was scheduled from our checking account to our savings account of $55k (?!) We obviously don’t have $55k in our checking account, so we start frantically trying to figure out what’s going on. Numerous phone calls later, we still don’t know if that was a hack, if my husband somehow mistakenly scheduled the transfer himself, or if the bank messed it up. Either way, it doesn’t seem like any harm was done since the bank with our checking account just declined the transaction. But it seems really strange and worrisome. We get to work changing the passwords on all of our accounts, just in case it was some kind of hack.
After dinner (and chocolate cake), I have a Zoom happy hour with a local friend. We occasionally see each other outside but it’s nice to have a longer chat from the comfort of our living rooms. We both love murder mysteries, so we signed up for a service where a company sends us letters with clues and we try to solve the mystery together. It’s a fun way to stay connected and look forward to something during the pandemic. The service costs about $15 per month, but I paid for it in lump sum for 3 months, so it’s not included in my budget above. I drink some wine and we vent about work (we work at the same place) before getting started on the puzzle.
Daily total: $0
Day 4
Morning: I sleep in a bit, which is nice. Get up around 7 am. My parents are both getting their 2nd vaccine today – they’re both in their 70s and I am so relieved. I send my mom a “congratulations on being vaccinated!” text and we chat for a bit. I have leftover cornbread with honey and butter for breakfast – soooo good.
Work is not particularly exciting today, but someone sends me a last-minute request for something that does not need to be so urgent. I feel annoyed. Still no word from the interviewers on Monday, and I’m beginning to suspect I wasn’t selected to move forward. Too bad. K pays for a Wordpress website for the year (it’s a work-related website, but sadly his work doesn’t reimburse him). It costs $92.48.
Noon: The mariachi music is particularly loud today. I stand out on my balcony in the sun for a while and watch the workers. It’s been interesting seeing a house go up next door in real time, especially since I’m at home all the time. The workers are balancing on the top of the third story wall without, as far as I can see, anything like a safety line. It seems unsafe, but I presume they know what they’re doing.
We booked a cabin for the upcoming weekend in the Hood Canal region of Washington to do some hiking and birdwatching. I want to be as safe as possible and not go to any grocery stores or risk spreading COVID in any way while I’m there, so I place another grocery order with Whole Foods just for some special treats for the weekend. The cabin has a small kitchen and a grill, so we’re planning to make a fancy steak salad on Saturday. I order chips and hummus, some fancy cheese and meats, Tate’s cookies (I’ve heard a lot of good things about these), a baguette, and the ingredients for the steak salad. I also order a few staples I forgot in our last order, like sweet potatoes, more coffee, and half and half. It comes to $87.41, including tip, but that does include like $30 worth of steak. For some reason, I can’t order a small amount of steak online, so I’m planning to freeze half of it for later. (I include this purchase in our vacation fund budget, rather than under our regular grocery budget).
Around 2 pm, K makes a quick trip to our local wine store to buy an Oregon pinot noir and some port to enjoy at the cabin ($59.45). This store has an outdoor walk-up counter where you can tell the owner what you’re looking for, and he brings you some options (the store is way too small to allow customers to enter during Covid). It’s fun to chat with another human being, even briefly.
Evening: After work, we spend a little time rebalancing our investing and retirement accounts. We decide to put more money into bonds and a little bit into REIT’s as a hedge against a potential crash or recession in the future. Then I start making dinner – Broken Eggs (Huevas Rotas) from the NY Times cooking site. You basically cook the potatoes in a skillet in water, spices, and olive oil, and then sauté them to crisp them up once the water evaporates. Then you add onion, lots of garlic, and finally some eggs. It is delicious. I eat it with leftover cornbread while watching RuPaul’s Drag Race season 13 with my sister – we watch the first two episodes. It’s full of twists and turns. A note about this – we have an elaborate procedure for watching shows together developed during quarantine whereby we start the show at the same with an earbud in one ear, while FaceTiming. I also have chocolate cake, of course.
Later, I get an email that I’ve signed up for HBO on Amazon Prime. I definitely have not. I text my mom, who shares my account, and she tells me she signed up by mistake. I cancel right away and luckily they won’t charge us for it.
Meanwhile, K is doing an online Japanese language class over Zoom. He’s been interested in learning ever since we went to Japan last January. I lived in Japan for 3 years so I was able to take us around to a lot of more obscure places and he really enjoyed the trip – it was a blast.
K starts a YouTube yoga class (from Do Yoga With Me – my favorite channel) and I join him for part of it before bed around 10 pm.
Daily total: $239.34
Day 5
Morning: I get up around 7 am and we go for a run first thing. I prefer running early in the morning because there are fewer people to avoid during COVID. We do a different route today – it’s longer (3 miles) but has fewer hills. It’s a slog, as always, but I feel good when I get back right around 8 am. I jump straight onto my computer to start checking work emails and my husband makes us avocado and egg toast for breakfast - it is absolutely delicious.
We talk about how our bathroom smells distinctly mildewy (yay for being a grown-up because I guess this is what we talk about now) and we buy two big buckets of DampRid on Amazon ($26.60). I’ve found this to be a necessity in Seattle. Mid-morning, I take a break from work and start packing for our trip to the cabin.
Noon: I have leftover potatoes and cornbread for lunch, and my husband has the leftover chili. We finish getting ready to leave and head out right after lunch, taking a half day. The only problem is that I have attend a meeting at 3:30 pm, so we head out hoping to get there in time. Our cabin is near Quilcene in the Hood Canal region of Washington, about a 2 hour drive or a 2 hour ferry ride + drive. We are initially planning to take the ferry both ways, but realize that we mistimed the ferry departure, so we drive the whole way instead. Luckily, there’s little traffic mid-day, and we arrive at our Airbnb around 3:00 pm.
The Airbnb is beautiful! It’s a small cabin handmade by the owner, whose house is next door. It’s very rural, with a beautiful view. It’s tiny, but has a little kitchen and a waterfall-style shower with river rocks on the floor. It’s a great place to get away for a short time. Luckily, it also has good reception and I’m able to sit in on my meeting with no problems. My husband also does a little work, and then at 5 pm we’re free!
In our planning, we decided to get takeout on Friday night, since the little kitchen isn’t designed for any serious cooking. We call ahead to a local restaurant to order burgers (one of only 2 restaurants in the whole town). It’s around 5:30 pm and the place is deserted. It’s a microbrewery, but they tell us they haven’t been making beer since COVID-19 hit. None of the workers are wearing masks when I walk in, but they put them on when they see I’m wearing one. I pick up our order - a few bottled beers and burgers and fries ($49.52 including tip).
Back at our Airbnb, we watch Big Trouble in Little China and enjoy our very messy, but delicious, burgers (it costs $4.39 to rent). The movie is very campy but fun. I love silly action movies, as you will see with my other viewing choices. We wrap up the night in a very exciting fashion, eating chocolate cake and watching old episodes of the original Star Trek.
Daily total: $80.51
Day 6
Morning & noon: When we wake up around 8 am, the weather is looking thankfully clear and even sunny! We were expecting rain, so we’re really glad. We decide to go hiking today, and we head out before even having breakfast, with snacks and lunches packed. Our first destination is a hike called Mt. Zion, but unfortunately, we run into enough snow 2 miles before the trailhead that we decide to turn back. We don’t have any traction for our Subaru and don’t want to risk getting stuck on a very narrow mountain road. Instead, we drive another hour or so to the Lena Lake trailhead, a very popular and less strenuous trail. It’s about 7.5 miles roundtrip with 1200 feet of elevation gain.
By this time, it’s around 11:30, but luckily there is still parking. It’s a great hike up, and we run into relatively few people. We always mask up whenever we pass anyone, as does about 50% of the people we meet. The others… not so much. Around a mile from the lake, we start to run into snow. It’s turned into a beautiful sunny day, and I’m loving seeing all this snow! It’s a bit slippery, but not too bad. We make it to the lake mid-day, and it’s super jammed – there’s only a small viewpoint accessible, so everyone is crowded in there. I feel a bit uneasy with all the unmasked people, but we manage to find a spot away from the crowd and sit down to eat our lunch of apples, chips, and energy bars. There are a ton of robber jays there (Canada Jays) which try to eat our chips. It is fun watching them, but I’m annoyed to see some kids feeding them – it’ll just make them that much more aggressive. Bad trail manners.
On our way back down, we get stuck behind a group of 5 unmasked adults, who refuse to cede the narrow trail to faster hikers. I’m a slow hiker myself, so, to be clear, I’m not angry at slower walkers being on the trail but have some self-awareness and let people pass! especially if you’re going to go hiking in a big group during a pandemic! We finally get back down and head back to our Airbnb.
Evening: Back home, we explore some of the trails our Airbnb host has set up around his extensive property, and then relax on the deck. The sun is breaking through the clouds and it feels wonderful to sit out in nature and feel the sun on my back. We open up a bottle of wine and have a few pre-dinner snacks (more chips and hummus). For this night, we brought ingredients to make a steak salad. Our Airbnb host has kindly set up a charcoal grill for us, so we grilled the steak and toast some bread on the side.
We eat dinner while watching the truly terrible Jean Claude Van Damme movie Bloodsport and finish up the very last of my chocolate cake. It’s amazing that anyone ever let Van Damme act… or should I say ‘act.’ I also have a Tate’s chocolate chip cookie or two, accompanied by a little port. My husband and I are truly very old people at heart, so we finish up the night watching a few episodes of Columbo.
Daily total: $0
Day 7
Morning: Unfortunately, K had insomnia last night, so he sleeps in pretty late. I drink coffee in bed and enjoy looking at the view out our big windows. Once he’s up, we get packed up and write a thank you note for our host. It was a great stay.
One of my big hobbies is birding and K enjoys wildlife photography, so we go out to look for some lifers! (The first time you see a new species of bird). Did I mention we are very old people in (relatively) young bodies? We first go to Dosewallips State Park and see some bald eagles, great blue herons, lots of various ducks, and a flock of Canada Geese, which, strangely, includes a domesticated gray goose. He’s much larger than the Canada Geese and seems to be watching over them. It’s kind of cute. Unfortunately, a lot of the birds are too far from shore to be seen clearly.
Our next stop is Point No Point (I love all the sad & disappointed names that early Westerner explorers gave places in the Washington/Oregon coast), a popular birding spot. We see a ton of birds here, and I can understand why it’s so well-known - Red-Breasted Mergansers, Western Grebes, Common Goldeneyes, Pacific Loons, and a few others I can’t identify yet. Most excitingly though, we see a whole pile of otters! They’re lounging around together on a rock just offshore and a ton of people are watching. We watch as they all slip off the rock and go hunting in the shore. It’s my first otter sighting in the wild, and it’s so cool! We also see some seals and possibly a sea lion. It’s a great spot for wildlife. We eat some snacks (hummus, chips, some sliced meat & cheese) before we head out.
I really want to come back to this area another time and explore further, but K has decided that we need to get back home in time for the Big Game. We take the 3:00 pm ferry back to Seattle ($16.40) and get home around 3:45 pm. I veg out at home while my husband watches football. He’s a Patriots fan but he still loves Tom Brady (??) so he’s happy to see Florida win. I don’t understand sports team loyalties at all, but whatever, I’m glad he’s happy. We order from a new Indian place called Spice Box and get vindaloo, roganjosh, and vegetables pakora – so tasty ($53.96). Happily, there’s enough left over for lunch the next day, since I have no plans for what we will eat yet!
I’m really dreading work the next day, as I know that it will be obnoxious. I want to get out of my job so badly, but it doesn’t look like I’m going on to the next interview stage for the job I interviewed no back on Monday. I’m feeling kind of down about it. I try to stay positive and promise that I’ll apply for at least 2-3 new jobs next week. I bake up some frozen cookie dough I had in the freezer and feel sorry for myself. We end the night by watching another episode of Columbo.
Daily total: 70.36
Food + Drink: $395.23
Fun / Entertainment: $26.40
Home + Health: $26.60
Clothes + Beauty: $0
Transport: $16.40
Other: $170.48
Grand Total: $635.11
I think this week was pretty normal for us. Obviously we spent a bit more than usual due to the weekend cabin trip, but nothing outrageous. Our largest consumer spending category is definitely food and drink – we live in a very busy area of Seattle with tons of restaurants and bars so believe it or not, we actually used to spend even more on eating out. We still try to support our local places by getting takeout or delivery during the pandemic and even occasionally getting a few drinks outside. I spent more than usual on groceries due to stocking up for the weekend away.

@TraceSafeTech and Why We Love it - written by @mrdotto5 @stockfamgroup $TSF $UTOLF

TraceSafe Inc. (TSF in Canada, UTOLF in U.S. with OTCQB listing in near future)
Industry: Real-Time Location Services (including Contact Tracing)
Notable Management:
Mr. Wayne Lloyd (C.E.O. of TraceSafe)
Dr. Dennis Kwan (C.E.O of TraceSafe Technologies),
Why We Love it:
By the time I finished my DD, and I did quite a bit of it, TraceSafe was an auto-buy for me and a pleasure to write about. But before diving in, I had questions; plenty of them. I believe that investors should enter every opportunity with skepticism. It gives you a clearer head and reduces potentially dangerous levels of FOMO (fear of missing out). FOMO can drive valuations of stocks to scary levels and it rarely ends well, as retail buyers like you and me buy the hype on a company while bigger players exit their positions.
Smaller growth-oriented companies can often have new, exciting technology that captures the imagination of the market, but smart investors, retail or otherwise, always look for one key milestone before buying in: validation. Without proof that a company is successfully penetrating their market, you’re buying the idea instead of the reality.
When I first looked at Tracesafe in the autumn of 2020, I was impressed by the technology they were bringing to market with an experienced management team. But I didn’t invest my hard-earned money because I needed to see real partnerships with big-market companies. Cutting edge technology, for all its impressiveness, isn’t worth much to a company without the means to monetize it. If you’re buying the idea, you’re making a leap of faith, and that is a little too close to gambling for me.
So much has happened since then that the leap of faith has become an open door to walk through. Validation is here.
But before we get to all that, let’s set the foundation, because none of this would have been possible without the management team, which is one of the most impressive parts to the story. The C.E.O., Dr. Dennis Kwan, and The C.T.O. Suresh Singamsetty, have been developing technology companies in the wearables space for years. Dr. Kwan co-founding Martian Watches, the first ever voice-enabled smartwatch. He was also V.P. of a Bluetooth company that was acquired for $160 million and he personally owns more than ten patents in wireless/bluetooth technologies. Mr. Singamsetty, the software expert, was with Dr. Kwan at Martian Watches. He owns more than 20 patents himself. The third member of the team, Gord Zeilstra, is another massive successful industry veteran. His specialty is driving companies’ global sales footprint. His success in the building of Monster.com and S.A.P. into global brands is an exciting indicator of where TraceSafe is headed.
So what about validation? Let’s begin with its partnership with Tritan Software. You probably haven’t heard of them, but I have no doubt you have heard of Carnival Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Lines, and Royal Caribbean. Tritan is the health and safety software provider for 95% of the entire global cruise line industry. I’ll put that in word form to give it the attention it deserves: NINETY FIVE PERCENT of the global cruise line industry.
Tritan is responsible for collecting, storing and securing the privacy of health information for all passengers, in addition to quality and incident management and a host of other software solutions. The CDC (Centre for Disease Control and Prevention) will most certainly have compliance requirements for resumption of sailing operations and Tritan knows this, which is why they are acting now, and acting swiftly. (Countless other companies approached Tritan, but they chose the experience and superior security of TraceSafe). The partnership was only recently announced and it remains to be seen how entwined the two companies will become, but contact tracing is only the tip of the iceberg (sorry, not the best cruise line analogy). For a clearer picture of the entire iceberg, we can look to Walt Disney’s iconic theme parks.
It is no secret that Disney theme parks have always placed a premium focus on customer experience, and one of the most effective ways they achieve this is through the “Magic Band”, which is essentially a wearable device that customers use to enter the park, unlock their hotel rooms, and buy food and merchandise. A one stop shop on your wrist.
This is where the cruise industry is headed. With a wearable on your wrist, you can enjoy all the same conveniences as the Magic Band combined with a contact tracing and safety monitoring device, all in one device.
So, that’s it? The cruise lines?
Even if it were the only partnership in the pipeline, it may have been enough to turn TraceSafe into a major global player, but it is just one of many projects, both ongoing and in the future. But even greater validation was announced just today (making me do some quick edits to this story)
TraceSafe, just today, announced a potentially game-changing purchase order. The agreement is to supply a global Tier 1 semiconductor manufacturer with 60,000 wearable units to be used across their enterprise. Professional services network Deloitte is managing the implementation of TraceSafe’s “next generation” of wearable products, which can be processed and paired within seconds, compared to about 3 minutes per device of other companies in the industry.
To give you an idea of the magnitude of this agreement, Dr. Kwan is quoted “This is one of the largest deployments of its kind anywhere in the world and we are very proud to be working with technology innovators to deliver a product so important in enhancing the health and safety of their workforce.”
I will forgive you if you stop reading now. The above agreement, combined with the cruise line partnership, is honestly enough for me and for many investors, but for those who stick around, the story actually gets considerably better.
The total wearable market is projected to reach $60 billion, and a large part of this will focus on corporate safety. In this way, Tracesafe has a bit of an advantage, as the company has a presence in Southeast Asia. You will remember that long before we realized the impact of the pandemic, several Asian countries were already scrambling to deal with the first wave. Since that time, we have dealt with each wave several months behind Southeast Asian countries. This time lapse has given TraceSafe a window into near-future conditions in the Western world. The best example of this is in Singapore, where they are closer to emerging from lockdown than we are in North America. Singapore has become the proving ground for TraceSafe technology., and it has gone perfectly. TraceSafe is being worn on construction sites for Boustead, a massive Singaporean construction company. This partnership has not only led to improvements in safety and security at Boustead, but it has also won TraceSafe the Singaporean National Innovation Award.
Closer to home, TraseSafe partnered with The World Junior Hockey Championships in Vancouver, Canada in December. The tournament was essentially a bubble-event that was completed safely using TraceSafe technology. T.T.G, the sponsorship firm that organized the event (and, incidentally, was instrumental in bringing The Winter Olympics to Vancouver in 2010) was impressed. So was Telus, the tournament sponsor. The future is very bright in venue tracing, with fans itching to return but needing a safe and proven way to do it.
There remains one incredibly large catalyst for growth, and some may find it the most interesting of all, but before we get to that (cough, Airbeam, cough), let’s quickly dispel any lingering doubts you may have:
Aren’t those wrist bands uncomfortable and a nuisance?
This is another part of the reason Tritan and others have chosen TraceSafe. Recall that two of the management team are pioneers of the wearable space with over 30 patents between them. The TraceSafe product has a battery that long outlasts any other in the industry and it is also incredibly lightweight and unobtrusive. Added to this is the
extended product line, with tags and credit-card style devices.
Discounting everything else in the pipeline, is anybody seriously going to get back on a cruise ship after all that has happened? Will the return to cruise lines be slow?
The high amount of bookings for the second half of 2021 says “no”, and so do experts in the field, who state that cruise line demand is higher than most other industry segments. Once people are vaccinated, the industry will return in a big way. Tritan understands this; hence the quick action.
But what about privacy? Isn’t this just another way for companies or governments to spy on us?
I honestly wondered about this because it seemed an obvious question, but the answer makes complete sense. If the TraceSafe software were downloaded onto your phone, perhaps there would be more skepticism on my part. We all value privacy and bristle when it is infringed upon. But these devices are only work-site specific, meaning that the wearables (and software embedded in them) are separate from your personal devices and they do not function once you leave the site. They only ensure health and safety through workplace tracking.
Aren’t margins higher on software than hardware? Will this make enough profit?
The answers to these questions vary, but they all begin with “yes”. Margins are indeed higher on software, and TraceSafe in fact is currently selling 50/50 between hardware and software (cloud computing), with a focus on moving to 20/80 in the coming months. The cloud-based real-time monitoring system does not, in fact, need an internet connection (which I’d say is important when you’re out at sea) as it is a bluetooth device. No user information is stored on the device and it has medical-grade privacy/security (remember the company’s origins). The administration functions are user-friendly.
What about the revenues?
Whatever exciting news you may hear about a company, it is always more reassuring to see actual revenues pouring in, even so soon after developing a contact tracing solution. TraceSafe could be forgiven for only being a quarter or two away from meaningful revenues, but luckily for investors, this isn’t the case. Based on video interviews in January, the company expects to continue their 100%-200% year over year growth, which puts them somewhere between a projection of $20-$32 million for 2021. Although it should be noted that I’m extrapolating these numbers by following growth patterns from previous quarters, this DOES NOT INCLUDE ANY NEW PARTNERSHIPS, INCLUDING THE AGREEMENT ANNOUNCED TODAY! (Oops, sorry. I seem to have left caps lock on there!).
And then there is the share float. Fully diluted, after all outstanding shares incentive-based options, the total share count will be under 70 million. This is a very small float, which appeals to most investors, as a company in a growth phase will have fewer obstacles to share price growth.
What about data? Data monetization is big business.
TraceSafe will have the ability to monetize data from their cloud-based software at some point in this process, although that shouldn’t be confused with personal data, which would never be shared, obviously. But corporations looking for trends in safety and efficiency would most definitely benefit from the analysis of general workforce data.
What else am I missing?
This is a bonus for the company that cannot be overstated. Airbeam. Ever heard of it? Before you read the bonus paragraph below, note that TraceSafe has invested into Airbeam and owns an impressive 9.9 million shares. Ok, go ahead and read about Airbeam now (Thanks to Stock Fam discord user “Aberdenov” for the assistance)
The 5G revolution is upon us. This revolution will be in the tens of TRILLIONS of dollars. Airbeam will be a player in 5G critical infrastructure. Their 5G micro cell network utilizing AI/ML with EDGE computing on the 60Ghz band will be a catalyst for smart cities enabling such things as autonomous vehicles.
Airbeam will also be deploying wireless cameras with unlimited storage and smart displays for advertising. The company is led by former executive and head of research and development at Qualcomm, Dr Karim Arabi, and along with Stockwell Day and his political connections, the future looks bright for the company. Airbeam's last private raise was back in 2019 with a valuation of 97 million. Since then they have gained traction with pilot projects in America, Qatar and the Philippines. An IPO is expected sometime in 2021 with a far higher valuation.
TraceSafe has openly talked about increasing shareholder value after the Airbeam IPO, including a potential dividend, which is unheard of for a growth tech company.
So you see how skepticism can lead to the DD that you need to uncover a company like TraceSafe. It has the management team, tech cutting-edge technology, the validation, the contracts, the blue-sky opportunity of an industry that will be a part of our lives, and an incredible piece of foresight to buy in early to a very hotly anticipated IPO.
Just another Stock Fam favourite! Thanks to expert poster Jethro and all the members of the TraceSafe channel for their relentless DD. Come join the discussion!
Follow me on twitter MrDotto5

Guarding our assets: Victor Oladipo and the franchise's path forward

I had started writing a post about what the next steps for the franchise could entail when I realized that a huge amount of it revolves around one guy... the player return we got from the Harden trade who happens to be entering Unrestricted Free Agency in a few months.
When the news came through that we had traded LeVert for Oladipo, many assumed that it was just a move to reduce salary by Tilman, but I reject that as overly pessimistic. Oladipo in his prime (which was not long ago at all) was a 2-time All Star and one of the premier defensive shooting guards in the league. His horrific injury has taken a bit of time to come back from, and worried Indiana enough to scare them off from wanting to deal with re-signing him to the max contract he will be requesting in Free Agency next summer. They saw so much value in having LeVert locked up on a cheaper deal for extra years that they were willing to take him on with his cancer concerns instead of dealing with a potential max deal for Vic. I don't see this as a salary move from Tilman so much as I see it as a gamble on a player returning from injury by Stone. Between taking chances on Wall, Boogie, and Nwaba, hoping players can come back from bad injuries is a common thread in his gambles and seems to be his "M.O.", so I'm thinking he honestly hopes Victor can come back to a significant percentage of his peak level.
Trading Harden for a younger All-Star SG +8 FRP assets is a massive coup of a deal... if Oladipo is capable of playing close to the level he was at before his injury.
Unfortunately, Victor hasn't gotten back to that level yet... But he isn't that far away, either. He has flashed his potential several times, but has had an equal number of horrific shooting nights. This lack of consistency is problematic, but if he could stabilize around the level of his better performances (which he is obviously capable of), there isn't really a question that he would be worth a near-max deal if not a full max.
Obviously, getting that consistency back is his primary goal and there is no reason to believe that it isn't our hope for him as well. If he does, then we can feel safe signing him to a long-term deal or, if he returns to form quickly enough, we can flip him for more assets.
The first option there is relatively straight forward. Re-signing him if he is close to his old production levels is a no-brainer. You've seen the reports that neither side are giving committed answers one way or the other at this point, which is sensible in terms of leverage in negotiations. Both sides know that he has more to prove and if he doesn't prove it, there isn't a good reason to offer him a max deal next summer. Some team will likely do it anyway, and there is even a chance that it may be us; but saying we are looking to do it before seeing that proof of play is a bad move (especially with no guarantee that another team will do it). It would be a mistake to offer him $34M/yr with 8% increases if he doesn't show serious progression from his current level of play. The question is... at what point does it no longer become a mistake?
Here is a list of available UFAs next summer (from Hoops Rumors):

2021 Unrestricted Free Agents

Point Guards

Shooting Guards

Small Forwards

Power Forwards

Centers

Although there are some interesting names on the list, unless Schroeder ends up with a FMVP or Jrue Holiday or Kawhi Leonard decide to leave their teams, Victor Oladipo is probably going to be the most sought-after Free Agent next summer. A fair number of teams have max space, so it is likely that he will get his max deal from somewhere. Oladipo has expressed interest in Miami, but they aren't likely to have a max slot available after signing Bam to his extension. A number of other teams do have plenty of space available, though, including the Knicks, Bulls, and Spurs.
If you can't see where I'm going with this, the question is... should we also consider being a team that offers him a max contract? Obviously we don't want to get caught up in a bad contract that prevents us from missing out on other Free Agents! Well, who else on that list strikes you as someone we should spend money on? There are some interesting names. Harry Giles... Otto Porter... Hey, maybe we could get Kelly Oubre!
But anyone we would want will also be wanted by another team, and there will be a bidding war that also makes that guy overpaid. In short, I'm suggesting that year 1 of an Oladipo max would not be a problem even if it were an overpay.
Well what about year 2? Here is a list of available FAs the following summer:

Unrestricted Free Agents

Point Guards

Shooting Guards

Small Forwards

Power Forwards

Centers

Zach LaVine is obviously the highlight here. Aaron Gordon and Terry Rozier are some other interesting names (and it's worth pointing out that Brooklyn's Big 3 could opt-out and enter FA). Is the hope of convincing Zach LaVine to sign here worth leaving open space for? Maybe you think so, but I'd suggest it's not.
Because here's the thing...
We can trade Oladipo.
Obviously we can trade him in the next 7 weeks, but we can trade him after re-signing him, too. In fact, as long as he doesn't get re-injured or regress horribly (the latter being something we can probably determine this year if you aren't already convinced), it won't be so hard to move his contract. A 30% max contract is not the problem that a 35% supermax represents. Any of the big name Free Agents could be sign and traded by their teams in return for Oladipo. If his contract has turned negative, we may need to include a pick or two... but we have a lot of those! And using them to move a bad contract as a way to sign a top-tier FA really isn't a waste of picks. It's essentially the same thing as using picks to trade for a superstar (WHICH WE CAN ALSO DO! more on that in a minute). Using Oladipo as salary filler in future trades is a good reason on its own to keep him around. There is a chance the deal will look like an overpay, but unless he has a horrific injury or falls off a cliff (which doesn't seem likely, imo), it isn't going to be that negative.
Victor will make over $10M/yr less than Harden is scheduled to make next year. Add that to an increased salary cap, and we can probably re-sign him to a max, re-sign Nwaba with Early Bird Rights, and along with Wall, Gordon, Wood, House, Tate, KJ, Ma$e and KPJ, have room to use the MLE and still fill out a roster while remaining under the tax.
It's basically this year's roster minus PJ, Ben, and Brown, but with an MLE signing to help out. Is that a Championship roster? No. It is competitive and has significant upside if the youth improve and the vets recover further from injury, but Wall and Oladipo are not the top-tier superstar needed to win a title.
But either one of them could easily be the 3rd best guy on a Championship team (with the other being sent away as salary match if/when such a deal arises) and resigning Vic - even to a max contract, if necessary - allows us time to find a trade for a superstar (or sign one in Free Agency by trading one of our guards).
I hear you calling me crazy for suggesting it. But what are the alternatives? Let's game plan them out, too. The popular idea is trading Vic before the deadline for more assets. This is not a bad idea... in fact, it may even be a better plan than re-signing him... but only if he can bring back a good deal.
What does a good trade for Oladipo look like? Well, in his prime he was a decidedly better player than Jrue Holliday, who just got traded for a decent player in Eric Bledsoe as well as 3 FRPs. It's unlikely that Oladipo will return to that form in the next 7 weeks (although not impossible, especially with the extra opportunity that Wood's injury affords him), but if he continues to flash that level of potential, we would be getting robbed to let go of him for anything less than 2 very lightly protected FRPs.
If that's the price for someone to trade for him, do you see it happening? I really don't. Maybe we get lucky and Miami gets desperate. Maybe another contender with assets to spare (there aren't so many left) decides to throw down an offer with hopes of a promise that he will re-sign (likely a max contract) with them. Again, I don't see this as likely. It would be great if it happens, though!
No, it is unlikely we can trade Oladipo for more than a FRP and some expiring filler. Now you may think that sounds like a good deal, but is it? Certainly it isn't good compared to what New Orleans got for Jrue, and while Oladipo doesn't look as good as Holiday right now, he undeniably has the potential to look that good. So the question is, do we certainly lose value on him by trading him on the cheap, or do we take a risk of losing value if he can't regain max-contract form. The former is obviously safer, the latter could obviously blow up if he has a career-ending injury (but it could also pay off with significantly higher rewards than a FRP).
So unless we get a lucky deal, it comes down to what our appetite for risk is. I'd say roll the dice on Vic. He's only 28, so age is not really a factor on his next contract. It's completely a question of how close to his old self he can return to. We've seen some promising signs in the short season so far, and will now get a month of real opportunity to gather information on him.
And here's the biggest problem with trading him for bad value... if we trade him for a pick without getting a very solid player in return, our roster will absolutely get worse. It drops us from our current status of 'bottom bracket playoff team' to 'No-Mans land'... being in the 9-12 range.
That's a horrible spot to land. If we are there, it makes more sense to tank, leading us into the last section of this essay on guarding our assets...
DON'T TANK
It's 2 AM here and I've been writing for too long, so I'm gonna make this short and sweet.
Tanking sucks. Losing sucks. We don't want to be losers if we can be semi-competitive. Showing a commitment to winning attracts Free Agents, keeps Wood happy, and allows us to maintain a franchise that is literally one piece away from being right back as a contender.
We are not Oklahoma City. Free Agents want to play in Houston. Maybe its not LA, NY, or Miami, but there aren't many other cities above us on the list of destinations. If we trade for a guy, he's liable to stay. We don't need to rely on high draft picks to get talent.
(side note: tanking is not even a reliable way of getting talent! Between reduced lottery odds and the uncertainty of high picks panning out, it's a bad way to depend on getting a superstar. Philly and OKC are the closest examples of it 'working out' and those were under the old lottery odds... now it would be significantly harder. Additionally, remaining competitive keeps our Brooklyn pick swaps in play as being assets. If we sell all assets and aim for the bottom, then it will be a long climb out in which at least 2 and quite possibly 3 of our swaps are basically completely surrendered, whereas keeping competitive can allow those swaps to become quite valuable even if the Nets don't bottom out as badly as they did for Boston. Not to mention the increased danger of giving much better picks to OKC)
Signing or trading for stars are MUCH more reliable methods... and we now have the picks to trade with. So that should be our preferred path to contention. Wait for the next top-tier superstar to become unhappy and fire away to get him. Only OKC and NO can compete with our picks package (and we can offer a decent player in return as an additional bonus!)
So when that next disgruntled star shakes free (which has happened more and more frequently), we stand poised to strike stronger than any team in the league.
A new era of contenders is on the horizon. The Lakers, Clippers, Warriors, and Nets are aging out. The Nuggets and Celtics are the types of teams we look to be competing against in a few years. Those are the superstars we need to be worrying about for now... not the old guard, but the young ones. Tanking next year puts us way behind in a rebuild that is only one move away. So get those thoughts out of your heads. We can compete with those teams with Wood, another star, and Oladipo or Wall along with all our promising young talent.
We will be back sooner than anyone expects. And as surprising as it sounds, the first step may well be signing Oladipo to a max contract next summer.

[Soulless verse] Twisted hell: Chapter 52

Chapter 1 | Chapter 51
-----
Several moons, at least half a year, have passed since Galizur left the camp near the portal. After reporting everything he saw and heard there to the heavens, emphasizing the Emperor’s demands, he was relieved of his task. With nothing better to do, he spent his days roaming the heavens, trying to find anyone who could know something more about the portal and anything related to it.
To his surprise, the information was very scarce. His fellow diplomats were oddly clueless about the subject. That was a new one, since the heavens were always very knowledgeable about what was going on in Greadinall. All its races would gladly share the information with the heavens, hoping to earn their favor. However, this time, everyone was eerily silent. It seemed as if every nation had a plan of its own, and wasn’t willing to share it. Some were even so arrogant to claim there’s no need for them to tell anything since the heavens see everything anyway.
That was hardly the case, but it was an elegant way to get the mortals to confess their sins. Making them think that somebody is always watching made them much more talkative. However, it seemed as if the mortals got wiser about it.
And what made it so strange was that all of them got wise about it at the same time. In other words, someone had a hand in it.
The logical culprit would be the high elves. Seeing themselves as superior to every other mortal race, they never liked that they needed permission to do anything. They’ve been doing their best to undermine The Timkik Empire for centuries, with the excuse being that the timkiks were too selfish and incompetent to rule Greadinall.
The heavens agreed. After all, the high elven logic made sense, and their arguments were solid.
It all started slowly and in a small way. Creating special, minor tariffs for the timkik merchants who wanted to sell outside of their homeland. Making it slightly harder for the timkik church to project its influence outside the Empire’s borders. But, with each new century, the high elves got progressively more aggressive. Not directly, it never got to the point where the high elves would directly challenge The Timkik Empire, but every century they’d find a new way to chip away a small piece of timkik strength.
Sensing that the Empire’s strength was slowly waning, the hosagian kingdom rose, demanding that the land that timkiks took from it a few millennia ago be returned. So, the war started, which lasted for several centuries now.
The high elves joined the hosagians but were unwilling to send their own to die in a war. So, they supported the hosagians from a distance, with coin, resources, and a few of their highly-skilled, veteran mages and Pegasi knights. Their navy also played a significant role, especially during the siege of Qalo, supplying the city through the port.
Their involvement stabilized the war, making it impossible for any side to win, draining both timkiks and hosagians in the process. The heavens realized what the high elves were doing but didn’t seem to care about it. After all, the mortals have every right to play their games, just how the heavens play their own.
And now, with their biggest mortal competitors exhausted, it seemed as if the high elves were trying to limit the influence of the heavens, the only force remaining in their way to dominate all of Greadinall. At least that’s what some angelic diplomats have concluded.
However, the others disagreed, with Galizur being one of them. Cunning as the high elves are, there was no way they would ever trick timkiks into opening a portal to hell. Yes, the high elves are cunning and unforgiving, but they’d never risk another fall just to obtain more power. They aren’t fools, far from it. What would be the point of spending centuries carefully navigating through the obstacles, only to have the demons ruin everything when they pour through the portal? In Galizur’s mind, the high elves have invested way too much to make such an uncertain, stupid gamble. After all, they’re known for their meticulousness. Taking risks is simply not their style.
So, someone else was pulling strings in this case. And what concerned Galizur the most was that whoever was behind the portal could also be behind the discord the high elves have created among the mortals.
In other words, the portal could be just a tiny portion of a much, much bigger plan.
But, putting that thought aside, the mortals have finally reached an agreement. It took them many moons to do so, but they did it in the end.
The agreement was that there would be no agreement. The Timkik Empire has rejected the heaven’s proposal, hosagian and high elven kingdoms have rejected the timkik proposal, while the rest of Greadinall couldn’t care less about what was going on.
And, what that meant was that at least three-quarters of its people weren’t interested in opposing the demonic invasion at its early stage. While timkiks, hosagians, and the high elves had a major influence over the continent, that didn’t mean they were the most numerous. They were just the loudest and the most aggressive.
The situation would be alarming if not for the fact that the timkik Emperor didn’t come crawling on all four during this time, begging for help. Expecting exactly that, the heavens have created a plan where the hosagian army, with some high elven and angelic support, would swoop in to contain the demonic hordes. The idea was that, once the demons have started invading, the other nations would realize the danger they’re in and would mobilize their armies. The plan also counted on the fact that the remnants of the timkik military would also join the fight. After all, their own homes would need some liberating.
But, the moons passed, without any news of the demonic hordes reaching the heavens. Not only that, there were no further requests from the timkik Emperor. You’d expect the ruler in such an epic pinch to be far more vocal and concerned about it but, instead, the timkik government went completely silent.
So, since no information was reaching the heavens, Galizur was sent once again to examine the portal. The excuse was very simple. Officially, he was to report how the interracial summit went to the portal-garrison commander. That way, even if timkiks were to complain about the unannounced visit, Galizur would present it as a goodwill gesture from the heavens. After all, one doesn’t share useful information with enemies.
---
Galizur didn’t have to land to realize that things have changed dramatically. First of all, there was no camp anymore! In place of the small camp with shaky palisade and ragged tents now stood a small town! Even from above, he could see its streets bustling with activity. Not wanting to spook the people, he landed some distance away, deciding it would be more prudent to approach the town on foot.
Before he has reached the town itself, he noticed two familiar faces approaching him, the dark-skinned military commander and his lighter-skinned knight companion.
“Ahoy!” The commander said heartily while raising his hand in greeting. Galizur gave him a deep nod as an answer, “I take it you want to speak with the royal archmage?”
“Indeed, can you please take me to her? I have some information she will find useful.”
“Please, come with us.”
Taking a better look at the commander, Galizur noticed that he was wearing some strange armor. It glittered in the sun, meaning it was made out of metal, but it wasn’t the plate armor he was used to. As strange as it sounds, it appeared as if the small pieces of metal were weaved together into an armor piece. However, he decided not to comment on it yet.
“Just the two of you came to escort me? I would expect you to have some more soldiers with you.”
“You didn’t come here to cause trouble, didn’t you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then, the two of us will do.”
As they approached the town, Galizur realized that most of the houses were made in a very simple manner, from wood. He couldn’t notice a single solid structure.
“Where did all these houses come from?” He asked, “I wasn’t here for a long time, but not so long for the houses to just pop up all over the place.”
Heartwell barked a small laugh: “The dwarves are to blame. Once they saw the trinkets the other world has to offer, they rushed to settle here. Most of the people in the town are dwarves.”
“Trinkets?”
“As it turns out, these demons are as good at creation as they are in destruction. But, Hazelmere will tell you more about it. I’m just a simple grunt, entrusted with your safety.”
Looking around, Galizur realized that what Heartwell was saying was true. Almost every second person he saw on the street was a dwarf. And it looked like all of them were busy, going about their business in a rush, not paying much attention to an angel who has descended from the heavens.
“We even have a market here now,” Heartwell said, “if you follow the clamor, you’re bound to find it. A lot of merchants from all over the Empire come here to trade. Dwarven merchants too.”
“So, people aren’t worried about the portal? About the demonic invasion?”
“Not at all.”
“I take it there are some good reasons for such enthusiasm?”
“Yeah, there are several of them. But our commander will explain it much better than I can. She’s far more eloquent than a simple peasant like me.”
They continued along the dirt-paths which acted as the streets, connecting the houses into neatly arranged rows. Even though everything about the town was simple, the orderly arrangement made it clear the dwarves have had a significant part in its construction.
The town was tiny, so it didn’t take long for them to reach their destination. It was a warehouse-sized building, looking far sturdier than the buildings surrounding it. It wasn’t made from stone, but the wood was clearly of the far more durable sort. It also had two floors, making it resemble a decently successful tavern in a way, putting aside the difference in size. Galizur noticed some very interesting details on it, like the Empire’s coat of arms, surrounded by several dwarven ones. He was also surprised to see that such a building, made from wood, had glass windows on it.
With perfectly transparent glass at that. Something Galizur hasn’t seen on the biggest, most luxurious mansions.
Entering the building, Galizur was greeted with more strange sights. There was an unfamiliar big, round object, high on the wall, with numbers arranged on its edges. Some strange, vertically placed, white tables, with all kinds of differently colored words written all over them. A big mirror with a perfect reflection, so perfect Galizur had to stop for a moment to check if another angel is in the building.
And, the strangest of it all were the people rocking in their chairs, everywhere around him. Some of them rocked themselves back and forth as if possessed, while the others would spin around. After some time, Galizur realized the people were perfectly fine. They were just sitting in some weird chairs.
“Oh …”
“Oh, no …”
Galizur realized what that meant but maintained his composure. He remembered Hazelmere warning him about this, and he did his duty reporting that to the heavens, stressing the logical argument the timkik mage has presented him with.
However, while the heavens were too busy sorting out the mortals’ disagreements, the demons have clearly opted not to waste any time and act as soon as possible.
“That explains why the dwarves got so invested in this place. And why they aren’t afraid of the portal,” he thought, “as long as their greed is satisfied, they are fearless.”
Heartwell and Vukasin led him to the upper floor. The stairs didn’t creak as they climbed them, confirming that this place was built with durability in mind.
“So, they are here to stay.”
Passing through the corridor, his escort led him into a very spacious, bright room decorated with a lot of furniture.
The furniture looked quite alien. The table and the chairs were too thin to support their own weight, let alone anything else, while the two sofas left the impression of elegant …
… nothingness.
Two white tables stood vertically, with all kinds of scribbles on them, identical to those on the ground level.
“Welcome! Welcome!” Cheerful Hazelmere greeted him, not giving him the time to take a better look around the room, “I was eagerly awaiting your return!”
“Ahoy,” Galizur responded politely, “I am glad for such a warm welcome, but I feel bad for making all of you take the time of your day just to greet me.”
There were quite a few people in the room. Not counting Hazelmere, Heartwell, and Vukasin, four archmages, an archpriestess, and three dwarves were also present.
“Oh, we would be here anyway! We are here all day, every day, examining the things from the other side!”
“So, the demons aren’t sending just the books now?”
“Yes! They became far more generous. Of course, we are sending some of our own gifts in return, like you have suggested we should do!”
“No, I didn’t…”
Galizur remembered, how he was the one to encourage Hazelmere to send some books to the demons as a sign of goodwill, saying that the goodwill the demons have shown should be returned.
It has certainly bought the heavens the time they desperately needed, but he never expected it to backfire like this.
“Is something wrong?” Hazelmere asked.
“No, I just … I am just surprised by how the things are playing out.”
“We are surprised too! We can’t believe it! For a bunch of frost-dwelling demons, these people certainly have a lot to show! And teach!”
“Teach?”
“Yes! The dwarves are obsessed with their mathematics! Especially the ones that calculate the behavior of objects! I heard that the dwarves have a racial affinity for math, but it looks like these demons have them beaten.”
Galizur looked at the present dwarves uncertainly.
Wyvernshield just shrugged: “Just like the lass says. They have a far better numerical system based on tens and have far superior logical operators.”
“They can even calculate the trajectory of celestial beings!” Another dwarf couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
For the first time, Galizur’s face showed the slightest of frowns. His big wings rose slightly.
“What did you say?”
“Don’t take it the wrong way, the lad is just too enthusiastic. We aren’t sure about that yet. We’re still experimentin’ with those equations.”
“Need I remind you that the demons are famous for their deceit?”
“Aye, which is why we’re testin’ everythin’ they claim.”
Hazelmere jumped between Galizur and the dwarves, an uneasy smile on her face.
“Anyway, I take it you bring us some news? What is going on with the other nations? Will they be coming to help?”
The joyful enthusiasm in Hazelmere’s voice made it easier for Galizur to forgive the insulting implication.
-----
Chapter 53
-----
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[Soulless verse] Twisted hell: Chapter 52

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