August, 2005:

Rule #1, in my book, is: Stop listening to professionals. 20 years in this business convinces me that any normal person using the customary 3 percent of the brain can pick stocks just as well, if not better, than the average Wall Street expert. – Peter Lynch

It looks like I rank pretty high in Yahoo searches. But to stay on the top, I would need more links pointing to my website. So, let’s play the link exchange game. You put me up on your site, I put you on mine.

The market is not showing any mercy to small cap stocks. Since most, if not all, of my portfolio is in small caps, I’m getting slaughtered right now. I hope this wave of financial massacre will pass soon. I’m not doing anything with my portfolio right now. I will hold and ride it out. In the mean time, I want to generate some revenue through other means… like ebay or Adsense??

Just when I complained their services are terrible and I’m staying because of their low price. I’m going back to Netflix.

From Blockbuster’s email:

We hope you are enjoying renting DVDs from BLOCKBUSTER Online™. In the year since we launched, we’ve had phenomenal growth thanks to people like you. We value you as a customer, and we hope you value our ongoing efforts to make BLOCKBUSTER Online the most convenient way to rent DVDs.

Beginning August 19, 2005, we will be raising the price of our BLOCKBUSTER Online rental plans.

Here is how your membership plan will be affected:

Your Current Plan: 3 at a time
Your New Monthly Price: $17.99 (plus tax)
The payment method you provided will be billed the above amount on: September 06, 2005

• Blockbuster’s website sucks. It has technical errors that always give me a page not found.
• Blockbuster’s queue is amateurish. It hardly rearranges in the order I want.
• Blockbuster’s delivery time is sluggish. It takes a week to get three discs.

These are the top complaints that makes me miss Netflix so much. When I was with Netflix, I remember logging in the website with problems. The site was intuitive, easy to use and the queue was great. Also, I watched a lot of TV series. The blockbuster site lists an icon for each episode. I thought that was kind of stupid. It takes up so much screen space and it was hard to scroll through shows that had multiple seasons, like Friends. On the Netflix site, I can click on “Add All” and it will add all the discs of that season for me. It’s not a life-threatening issue, but after I’ve used Netflix, I noticed a downgrade. The worst part is slow service from Blockbuster. I don’t know why it takes them so long to send a disc. I thought Netflix was slow with 3-5 days turnaround, but Blockbuster takes 5-7 days. Sheesh, if it wasn’t for Blockbuster competitive $14.99/month and my busy schedule, so I don’t mind the slow service as much, I’d have gone back to Netflix.

I wanted to sign up for the Citibank Dividend Card, which has 5% cash rebate on supermarket and gas purchases, and 1% on everything else. But I already have an AT&T Universal Card that pays 5% cash rebate on supermarket and gas purchases, and 1% on everything else. I realize the Universal Card and the Dividend card are the same in terms of cash rebates. They’re both from Citibank. In that case, I don’t need to sign up for another card. Good, I will not inquire a hard pull on my credit report.

I wanted to sign up for the Citibank Dividend Card, which has 5% cash rebate on supermarket and gas purchases, and 1% on everything else. But I already have an AT&T Universal Card that pays 5% cash rebate on supermarket and gas purchases, and 1% on everything else. I realize the Universal Card and the Dividend card are the same in terms of cash rebates. They’re both from Citibank. In that case, I don’t need to sign up for another card. Good, I will not inquire a hard pull on my credit report.

I wanted to sign up for the Citibank Dividend Card, which has 5% cash rebate on supermarket and gas purchases, and 1% on everything else. But I already have an AT&T Universal Card that pays 5% cash rebate on supermarket and gas purchases, and 1% on everything else. I realize the Universal Card and the Dividend card are the same in terms of cash rebates. They’re both from Citibank. In that case, I don’t need to sign up for another card. Good, I will not inquire a hard pull on my credit report.

I posted about the Blockbuster deal a while ago. I had cancelled my Netflix account and Blockbuster would give me two months free and then charge me 17.99 (same as Netflix) for each month thereafter. However, Blockbuster normally charges only 14.99 for it. So I was going to cancel my account, but it turns out that I can switch my plan to $14.99 with the click of a button. My free two months are over and now I’m on the $14.99 3-at-a-time plan. Now that’s a Blockbuster deal. As a bonus, I got a free DVD to keep and I picked Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones.

Every young man should have a hobby; learning how to handle money is the best one. – Jack Hurley