Petsmart

This email was sent to me:

Greg, do you know when Petsmart was founded? I'm looking at some charts online about the price of their shares over the years and I went as far back as 10 years(that's as far back as AOL will let me go without making a custom chart), however, there was a huge decline between '99 and '01 and I didn't know why. What I'm asking is have they been around, been public, for ten years or did they just recently spin off of a larger company in '99? (I guess the dip started in '97 actually) If they spun off of a larger company in '97 or '99 then that would explain why the stock market value of their shares was so low otherwise it seems rather peculiar.

Here's my reply:

Without looking at a chart, I would say that the dip is probably due to the stock market bubble bursting in the same time frame that you mentioned. It was a recession. Heres the deal though....they were making cash when the economy wasn't. People were not spending money on anything except for their mortgages and pets. Look at their earnings. They kept making money.

The stock was undervalued for the longest time because analysts just missed it. They didnt catch it. Its a pet company, who would have thought they were good....now 80% of analysts say to buy it....(I bought at 18 and 25...and probably will again soon).

Sometime around 2001 they revamped their stores and were widely successful in it.

Here's why I like them:

Dominance: They are an oligopoly with Petco...Petco is very strong too, and noone else can enter anytime soon. Pets have become like kids to many people in the last 5 years.
Management: They do everything right...(e.g. revamping their stores, adding VERY high margin services such as pet grooming and instore vets and pet insurance).
Cash Flow: They make a ton of cash, even when the economy wasnt.

I sent a 2nd reply shortly thereafter:

i love PETM....they have almost as much cash as they have total debt....they have substantially more current assets then TOTAL debt.

I dont care that the stock price dropped. Everyone was wrong! Stock price short term (less than 3 years) is more psychological then it is financial.

PETM does everything right! and they are just getting bigger and stronger...I could go on and on about why I think PETM is good. I've been saying all this when I bought them at 18.....(I bought and hyped up cendant back when they were at 11, 1.5 years ago, go see what they're at now....and i want to buy more of them too) Bottomline is I have smoked the hell out of the S&P over the last 7 years....I am a good guesser when it comes to this stuff. .....noone ever listens to me though.

**************UPDATE********************

UPDATE 06/29/04: Well, PETM is down 1.25 (which is 3%) as of right now...so either they are on sale, or everyone is selling based off of my post from last night.

Change...

This question was emailed me to me earlier today:

"Why are people so resistant to change? You do something that benefits
everyone in your department, increases productivity, morale, whatever.
There will always be someone who will resist the change even if its for the
better. regardless of comfort level, doesn't everyone want to move up or
move on?"


My answer:

Wow, I don't know. I mean the first answer that pops into my head is fear. Almost all people have a fear of the unknown. Is this justified? I don't think so. It is a world of survival of the fittest. By being afraid to evolve, you are accepting that others will pass you up. But not everyone thinks on that level. They think, "what about me...today."

You asked specifically about at work. That adds a whole new angle to this dynamic. Jealousy. The people that want to get ahead, wish that they had thought of your idea, and the poeple that don't want to get ahead resent you, because deep down inside they wish they had your talents.

Yes, deep down, most people want to move up. But they are afraid, or blind. They do not see how to move up. Anyone with an average or better IQ can get as far as they want in life. (e.g. the current President of the US.) They just don't see how. If you keep doing what you're doing, then you'll keep getting what you're getting. If you're not happy with your gold game, change your stroke...(unless you have the perfect swing Tiger! then when you change your swing you become as bad as everyone else).

But the real answer to your question is "I don't know, as soon as I figure out how to get the resisters to follow, then I will get into management."

Poetry I

You don’t see that your lies cannot compromise
What He was said to have worked for, bled for, and died for.
Anger breeds inside of me, believed in your theogony
Lives that do not live anymore, I had been there before,
Believed the score, but nevermore.
Just waste your time not thinking, sinking down as you are swallowed down,
By The One that was sent to save you.
Immortalized, by promises that could not be kept, leaps of faith that should not have been leapt.
But you made them, believed them, and still you sinned?
Nothing left to put your faith in. But it happens again.
Paradise does not wait for the waning of your mortality,
Wake up from your dream and savor a meal of reality
A Flower, dog, nor river gets a heaven when each dies,
Do you still not realize, you have bought the lies,
A child cries.
Death is the end.


****************************************

Tried to think a thought tonight,
Cried with a drink I fought with fright.
Never ending whispers I hear so real.
Clever mending answers I fear to feel.
Reality is a mindless perception perceived.
Mentality gives us timeless sensations deceived.


*******************************************

And now its time to look into the dreams of a fearful soldier,
Fighting his way, yet not knowing what his way is.
Walking into a future of paths not yet laid, not yet made.
He tries and cries, but it will not cure his subliminal alienation.
he walks mentally wounded before the battle ever begins.
His soul has been beaten and badgered by the ones he put his faith in.
Empty truster.
Choosing what is right, but not knowing his choice is wrong.
He doesn’t know what’s right, what’s worse is he doesn’t want to fight.
Too young to kill, too young to realize he is not as old and ready as he
Conceives and perceives himself to be.
But he follows
He is an Indian following a chief.
Nothing but a Naïve sheep.

God Part II

God is Omnipresent. Therefore he is in all possible worlds. If he is in all possible worlds then he is in both the supernatural and the natural (our) world. By definition the supernatural world would have to be outside of the natural world, or else things considered supernatural would also be natural because they actually happened in the natural world. They can not overlap or they would actually be the other. Since the supernatual world can not be in the natual world, and the definition of God included being in all possible worlds, then the possibility of God does not exist.

This same argument holds true for miracles.

P1) Miracles are supernatural occurance.
P2) Supernatural is outside of natural. They can not overlap.
_________________________________

c1) Miracles do not exist in our world.

Great News all (sarcastic)

Well I am sitting in class and I am just so excited because I just learned how to do my first web page. Check it out.

I do a firm wide Intranet site at work. Why wouldn't they let me test out of this shit? I still would have paid them.

I did my first website in 1997. All of the ones I did were on free servers so they are gone. I did find this one which I think is from 1998.

That was so so long ago. And yet now UMSL feels it is necessary to teach me this all over again. I really need to transfer, or drop out...my whole experience in UMSL's Grad School has been a let down to say the least. I am all for education, but I do not feel like I am getting one here. I do not feel like this school can challenge me.

Love,
-Sincerely Frustrated.

ATK...and MoDot

I emailed the following letter to the Missouri Department of Transportation:

Everyday when I am driving into work, I see on the back of signs the letters "ATK" spray painted on the back. What does this mean? It is driving me insane! I see this most frequently on 270 between Olive and 40.

Your timely response is greatly appreciated.

Their reply:

Dear Mr. Wilson,
Thank you for your email. The spray-painted initials on the backs of our temporary construction signs belong to our signing subcontractor, ATK. With so many signs around, they paint their initials on the ones they place around the work zones to keep track of them. Mystery solved!
Eve E. Jost
MoDOT Customer Service Representative

Please read this website

I could not have worded this any better. I would have mentioned to buy a house, and not buy insurance, but whatever.

Great Article.

Please be sure to read page 2 also. Follow these steps my friends. In 5~10 years, I don't want any of us to use the excuse "I don't have any money" or "I can't afford it." It's easy to get rich. easy.

Its hard to find stuff to say....

Well, I need to keep giving you fodder or you won't come back to me. But I've been in a good mood the last week or so, so I haven't had much to rant about. I still haven't heard back from the DMV regarding what "ATK" stands for, but I assure you I will find out for you. Why am I in a good mood? Well life's a roller coaster of ups and downs, I just happen to be on an up right now. Sure I could bitch about the cold sores that I didn't have before I started talking to the last girl that I was "talking to." But hey, that's neither here, nor there.

Post some comments saying how good life is.

The most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me....

Every now and again things happen to you that you wish never had. You wish no one would ever find out. You do your best to roll up into a ball, and make yourself so tiny that the world just forgets you are there. Well, I don't know how many times that has happened to me. But here's the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me. It was 5th grade. You see, when I was growing up, I was poor. My mom made my clothes. Yet they found some way to send me to a private grade school for 9 years. Well back to my story. I was a slob. I didn't tuck in my shirt, I wore shoes that were old and worn out. They were Sambas. Sambas have two roles in life. One to save moms money, and the other is so old soccor dudes who still have mullets have something to keep them in touch with soccor. My sambas had a third role. They had the unique ability to store mud in the treads. As I mentioned I was a slob. I ran through the small amount of mud that we had right off of the school parking lot...(the parking lot was our playground). So after recess we went back to class. The mud in the tread of my shoes decided it didn't want to be mud anymore...it wanted to be caked clumps of dirt. It also wanted to fall out of the tread and all over the floor in the front of the class. I didn't notice...and why would I have cared, it was just dirt. Well Ms. Wolfe noticed. She was a bitch. She went on a rant that seemed like forever but was actually only a minute or two about what a slob I was, how stupid I was, and the like. She gets paid to grow the youth. She cut me down. She made me resent the school. I had to go get a broom and clean the entire classroom because she said I was a slob and was going to be a janitor when I grew up. All of the kids who didn't like me anyways, just laughed and laughed at me...I felt like Jeremy in the Pearl Jam video before she shot everyone. Now I didn't understand suicide at the time, but I did understand that I wanted to kill her, if I only knew what killing was. I wanted to be any place other then where I was. I wanted to run away, my life was over.
That was the most embarrassing thing I can remember. But it was nothing. How did that event impact the world? It didn't. It was nothing that I should have cared about. But I did. Looking back, its easy to laugh. You all are disappointed by taking the time to read this post. You thought you'd get something juicy...perhaps involving me, a blonde, a crockpot, and hot sauce. No such luck. The things that embarass us are often so insignificant that noone else realizes how we feel. Everything passes.

Riddle

In a major league baseball game, a pitcher faced only 27 batters. Every batter he faced, he struck out. He allowed no hits, walks and no runs, or base runners. Yet his team lost 4-0. How could this be?

Ambition followup

In Mark Cuban's blog today he said the following:

"In the real world we either challenge ourselves to figure out how to reach our dreams and goals, or we find ourselves doing the same thing day to day wondering what it will take to find the lives we want.

In the real world, everyone thinks there is something special about themself.
If they only had the chance to show it, and somehow enable it, they could stand out from the pack. Some do. Most dont. "

I thought that that was a timely followup to my rant about people saying "I wish" instead of making it happen.

God Part I

One of the most common ontological proofs of God has always been Well someone had to have created everything. One famous analogy goes like this:

You are walking on the beach, you stumble upon a pocket watch. You don't know where it came from. All you know is that someone had to have created it. This parallels with our Universe. Someone had to have created it, right?

I don't know. But I do know that there are other options.

See we may be fallacious in thinking that events happen in a linear fashion. For example, if I push one domino the rest will fall. One event causes another, but there was some start to it. Someone had to have pushed the first domino.

We assume A-->B-->C--D--> ad infintum

But we are overlooking one simple argument:

P1) Everything in nature is cyclical
P2) The universe is in nature
____________________________________
C1) The Universe is cyclical.


What am I getting at? Time might be cyclical. Why does there have to be a beginning to it. Time could be like a ring. Ongoing and forever. Afterall "Time" is the definition of man. We may have misdefined it.

If Time has no beginning, then the argument for the necessity of a Master Creator is disproven.

I'm obviously not saying that this is true. But it might be.

And now for something completely different....

Joe Seider sent me this link.

Tell the Chicken What to do

Motivation vs Ambition

Ambition is wasted on the Unmotivated. Dreams are wasted on the undetermined.

I am not an ambititious person. Those that know me will argue that, but I am really not. I am determined yes, but not ambititous. I wish I was, but I understand that I am not. I do not know where I want to go, or who I want to be. I just know that I am so goddamn determined to overachieve that it will force people to move me up, or move me out.

What eats at me is those people who are ambitious but not determined. Why don't they overcome their fear of success and just do? Why don't they awaken from their dreams to make them happen? If you have an average IQ or better then the only obstacle in the workforce is yourself. The world is right in front of your finger-tips...reach out and grab it!

Why do ambititous people settle? Why the fear of success?

The fact that you think I am talking about you means that I am. I am talking about all of the people who have ever told me that they want more then they have, that they want this, that they want that...but then do absolutely nothing to get it.

The only thing people should fear is not using all the tools that they have been born with and have developed. Anything less makes you a victim of evolution, and not a driver.

Ambition is wasted on the Unmotivated. Dreams are wasted on the undetermined.

Networking

Blogging is amazing. There are so many implications to it. I wish I remembered the link to where Bill gates thinks blogging will go. But it is another medium, like chat rooms, that can catch on and have business and educational benefits. I get slammed with emails daily, and I am not even important. If alot of the info was dissiminated via blogs, I wouldn't be in my email jail. It is easy and quick to post. People can be notified upon updates, and then decide for themselves if they want the info or not. Blogs could cut back on at least 5 if not 10 emails a day for me...and like I said, I am not important. It is also a quick and easy way to put info on the web for those of us that do not know how to put info on the web. (e.g. the office assistants who send out most of the emails I am talking about).

I'm glad to see I have at least one reader...he has decided to give blogging a try, so please check out This Blog

Spread the word! Email a distribution list to all your friends, telling them to bookmark my blog. Feel free to setup your own blog.

Dead Presidents.

Well after reading my previous post on depressions, I want to cry. Seriously, its a good thing that I'm the only one that reads these things, or I would have made everyone cry. Hopefully this rant will be slightly more cheerful.

Amex, Nasdaq, and Nyse are closed on Friday. So is the government. Why you might ask? Because a 93 year old man who last month did not even remember if he was even alive, passed away. Now I am sure Ronald Reagan was a great man. I mean he had to be right? After all he was an actor, and before that he was in movies. (Do you see what I did there, I called him an actor for being a politician). I honestly don't have a problem with him. I have a problem with people making a big spectacle about his death. He didnt die in office. The only thing I remember about him are 2 of the policies that were tried when he was in office. Trickle down economics, which trickled down the drain, and the war on drugs, which we clearly lost. Boy and did the 80s ever suck. How could so many people forget how to act, write, and make music in one decade? Never had I felt the Nietzsche could have been any more right. (God is dead).

In any case. I am not trying to be insensitive...I just don't understand the over hyping of this particular situation...I feel that a few minutes of silence, a weekend of Reagan movies, and flying flags at half-staff is enough. (please do not make any wham jokes about f(l)ags flying at half-staff)

Finally, the Daily Show pointed out...how are Carter and Ford going to top this? They must be feeling screwed. Jon Stewart's writers' advice was that they should, uh, save a baby. By running into a burning house. Together. Holding hands.

Spread the word....Greg's blog is the site to go to when you are bored. Bookmark this page, eh?

Depression

Well this post will be a tad bit depressing. I wrote this like 4 years ago in an email to a friend.

Such a lovely day it tis outside. Took half of four hours to arrive at work, as opposed to the usual 20 minutes. The day is splendidly magnificent. Grayness around, simply surrounds my sight. Snow, endless
dull drabness. Slow moving people, slower moving cars. Out my window is depression, sickness, snow. The UPS man is freezing, he gets his blue collar wet on the drying snow that drips off the overhang on the rear of his truck. Cold winds, colder hearts, ego mongers selling their souls to whoever is buying, forever trying to fill the void that they have created for themselves. Depression is beauty. Sadness is
life...life slowed down to an observable pace.

People need and like depression, it is strangely addicting. Today is wonderful, addictions being filled, prescriptions being spilled. Look out your window, pure happiness, everyone is sad. By being
sad, they are all happy. Everything moves slower days like today....Depression is reality slowed down to an observable pace...sometimes life moves too fast for us to see just how horrid it is...that's why we need these gray days...so we can look inside ourselves, and see the things that we shouldn't see.

With Depression is a strange nostalgia. People put themselves in depressions, they leave themselves in depressions, they get themselves out when they want to. People take depressants. People love alcohol, the cheapest depressant. There is some strange need for people to be thrust into depressions. It can also be a status symbol...even when people are not depressed they feel a need to tell people they are...they don't know what its like to really be depressed...they are simply sad. Just like insomnia,
everyone whines about how little sleep they get...EVERYONE...(but you)...they have no idea what insomnia is really like, none...Fight Club is but a window to insomnia. People need the attention that is associated with such states of mind...it's the easiest attention to get, sympathy.

Life is the worst punishment that one can be given. There is no happiness, there is only depression, rejection, lies, repression, and unreality. Noone knows reality, we are programmed not to...life is torture...the only thing we can do is fake ourselves through life.

Jesus and a Godly Washing Machine

P1) Jesus was half man, half god.
P2) Men, by nature, are self-conscious, at least at some point in their life
__________________________
C1) Jesus was self conscious everynow and again.
C2) Therefore Jesus did not believe in God
C3) Therefore Jesus was atheist.

Wow, a 2 premise, 3 conclusion argument.


If you are like me then you are absolutely irritated by redunancies. Take for instance doing the laundry. Every time you do the laundry you have to pour detergent into the machine. Its messy, and for pansies like me, its heavy.

Why don't they just have a place where you pour detergent once a month or whenever that allows the detergent to be automatically dispensed based on the size of the load?

Flowers

Oh and what is the deal with flowers? Girls know how much they cost. Don't they realize that flowers are just a plant. Of course they do. See, I think that its a power thing. Girls see flowers just like they do grass, or someother plant that happens to have color. Its just a plant. The fact of the matter is they feel special because they were able to get us to drop 50~100 bucks on a plant. It might as well be dirt or used goop for all I care. We are buying them something that is worthless. Once we do this, they have won. They have beaten us, and have emasculated us.

On that note...for all of you guys out there, please check out Flowers.com.

@-v-^------ <----a rose for all the ladies out there.

Greg's Blogs is borne today....watch out!

Well every now and again someone says that I am a closed heartless, and cold person that refuses to open up. They could not be more wrong. They are not wrong because they think that about me, they are wrong because I have not fully let them into my world. Well as of today, my world is on the internet (7 years after I tried this before...you know back before you knew what the internet was). So I'm going to try to keep this thing updated. I am going to try to keep from bitching in here about you, and other people. This is not going to be a diary. So why do this? To quell the insanities that bruise my brain and give me migraines.

The fodder for my blogs will probably include stories, quotes, things that bother me (e.g. politics and alogicistic reasoning), poetry, and rants. I am not going to do spell checks, and I will probably come accross as being arrogant in these (go ahead laugh out loud at me saying that).

Please check out Mark Cuban's blog site. For those of you who don't know who he is, I am sorry.

I fell in love with a new lady last night. I have avoided her for the longest time, but can do so no more. Her name is Visual Basic. She is a beautiful thing. She has impecable logic, and does exactly what I want (when I am good). She is even going to do my work for me one day. She has more friends too, maybe one day I will get to know them. For those of you who are computer people, or know computer people, please help me get to know Visual Basic better, and then introduce me to some of her friends. Seriously. Please help me.

It will take 15 minutes to read the whole thing, but if you would like a different way of looking at the world, please read...An Interesting Essay.

Random rants (that you can probably see a pattern to):

-Why does Dr. Phil have a best selling diet book? He is fat.
-Why doesn't America realize that to lose weight all you have to do is burn more calories than you take in? If you have a balloon, and put air into it, then you put more air into it without letting any out, the balloon gets bigger. If you don't understand that analogy, then you are obviously overweight.
-Why is America still in Iraq? Bullies always grow up to be failures. America is a bully. America will grow up to be a failure. (Nice bit of syllogistic logic right there, eh?) I will refrain from ranting any more on this subject right now.
-If its a penny for your thoughts, but you have to put your two cents in, then where's that extra penny going? Someone is making a fortune. (Stephen Wright quip).
-Good bye Kurt Warner...your sucking will be missed.

Alright that's all I got for now...I need to get back to work. Please put this on your favorite places, and check it out again when you get bored.

If you are the half a person who is going to check this out again, I assure you that....