Click to ENLARGE. Base chart from ‘MarketWatch‘ (of course, of course).
I LOVE stock splits that give me MORE opportunity for option trading — my acknowledged addiction. When I heard of the 50-to-1 SPLIT I knew I had to buy some. With that split I only needed 2 shares to give me the necessary 100 shares for BIG BOY, ‘proper’ option trading.
Markets were down today. Chipotle was down just over 1%. 1% down is usually my threshold for buying a stock on the dip. I only needed 2. I bought 4, 2 for I … 2 for my 18 year old daughter (in her account). I might buy a few more prior to the split. Plenty of time.
As I have PROVED, contrary to what you might hear/read in the media there is NO ‘ex-‘ date for a split. Yes, you will hear folks talking of an ‘ex-‘ date & people will buy ahead of that. Then, the price drops AFTER that ‘ex-‘ date. I swoop in. SMILE. Pays to have my experience and savvy.
Chipotle is the ONLY NON-TECH I own! Ditto my daughter given that I do her investments. I LOVE TECH. I understand tech. I have done OK with tech.
My daughter of late has started eating at Chipotle. She is fussy as to what she eats and where she will eat. So, that was slight incentive. I like her to OWN shares in companies she uses, i.e., Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft. Makes sense. SMILE.
I have been hearing about it, i.e., Microsoft’s newly released ‘PC Manager‘, all over the place for the last 48 hours. Folks were RAVING about it.
I didn’t really need it. I keep my PCs quite clean and up to-date — & I don’t have any performance issues. But, I wanted to try it out. I did.
Not bad. Nothing spectacular. I have tools that do all of this. But, it is all in one place and it is from Microsoft — for FREE. So what did I have to lose.
IBM has been doing cloud since the 1960s, if NOT earlier!
That is IBM’s current problem. People keep on saying IBM needs to ramp up its cloud business — BUT, that is a bit hard when they have been doing cloud all along.
‘Cloud’ is a MISNOMER — & widely misunderstood. That is a problem. So many of the ‘pundits’ that prattle on daily about ‘cloud this & cloud that’ have NO IDEA what the cloud is.
This cloud ‘thing’ all goes back to the late 1990s when ‘Sun Microsystems’, then a MEGA tech company came up with the slogan: ‘the network is the computer‘.
Well that was never the case, but it was an attempt to highlight that networking was becoming increasingly important.
What ‘Cloud Computing’ means, cut to the chase, is SERVER-SIDE computing.
OK. So what does that mean. It means doing most — if not all — your computing & data storage on a server, as opposed to your desktop, laptop, mobile device (whatever).
Easy example. If you still use a PC/laptop do YOU still DOWNLOAD all your e-mails before reading them? If so, you are NOT doing CLOUD. You are reading your e-mails, previously downloaded, on your PC/laptop. CLOUD computing is if you do your e-mails, reading & composing, using a SERVER somewhere (far away) accessed via a network (i.e., the Internet).
Server side (i.e., Cloud) vs desktop (i.e., local).
IBM basically pioneered server side computing way, way, way back.
In the late 1980s & 1990s it was SEVERELY criticized & chastised that it never really succeeded in getting into local/desktop computing. That is where Apple, Microsoft & PCs came in. IBM was entrenched with Server Side computing –> i.e., cloud.
Now it is ALL cloud.
But, IBM’s major customer base was already doing cloud.
IBM can’t SWITCH these folks to the cloud. They are already doing cloud.
Now you get folks prattling on about Linux etc. Yes. Yes. That is a different story. That is NOT just cloud. That is changing the server side technology. The cloud part is still the same.
IBM’s current management has NO CLUE!
They are as clueless as the media punits.
IBM needs OLD IBMers (like I) who know what this is all about. NO, I am not looking for a job. I am happy. Thank YOU. But, there are plenty others.
I will say it again. IBM’s current management has NO CLUE!
IBM can only do so much with the cloud because so much of its base is already in the cloud.
Click to ENLARGE. I dashed this off (– using public domain images).Click to ENLARGE. From ‘Google News‘.
This, of course, has to be hailed. A female Vice President, viz. Kamala Harris, who is 50% Indian & now Parag Agrawal’s unexpected elevation at Twitter. It sure has been a banner year in the U.S. for Indian-Americans. This is quite the coup. Though IBM (alas) is no longer a household name, as it once was, it is still a $75 BILLION Dollar (U.S.) company. This is, of course, ultimate validation of the much vaunted ‘American Dream‘. These four, all of them still quite young, for a start, have done very well for themselves & are a HUGE credit (& source of celebration) for India.
Given that I have a 29-year old son, who is also a software-entrepreneur (who successfully sold his first company this August) I am very happy about this trend.
I will, of course, given my lifelong interest in high-tech keep an eye on these folks. Plus, I do own Google stock. I used to own Microsoft too, but not anymore. Ironically, I have never owned IBM shares for any meaningful length of time, even though my entire professional life, one way or another, was ALWAYS IBM-related! That must say something. SMILE.
Anyway, I just wanted to document this, since I wasn’t sure how many people had appreciated the extent of the growing Indian domination.
Click to ENLARGE. PDFs of the 1st main page of my last book created using ‘Soda PDF’, ‘Foxit’ & ‘Adobe Acrobat’.
Click to ENLARGE. Trial versions of ‘Soda PDF’ & ‘Foxit’ side-by-side on my old Windows 7 PC.
Click to ENLARGE. Creating a PDF straight from Microsoft Word. I will need Foxit or Soda to merge the PDF files since I split my books into multiple Word documents for ‘safety’.
Click to ENLARGE. Adobe’s current subscription pricing for Acrobat. No bloody way, Jose! Click to ENLARGE. Those Adobe does its darnest to keep it hidden, there is a non-subscription version of Acrobat too. But, it is NOT that cheap. Click to ENLARGE. Using Acrobat has NOT been easy. I maintain all these settings. This is the one I use for most of my books.
Truth me known, one of the reasons I DELAYED getting a new PC was because I knew I would have to get a new version of Adobe Acrobat. I have been using Acrobat 9 Pro since 2009 — when I got my last PC. Acrobat 9, however, does not work with ‘Windows 10’ & my new PC, of course, is running Windows 10.
Yes, of course, I can afford to get either Adobe Acrobat 2020 for $299 or the subscription ‘DC’ for $155/$179 a year. Money & affordability is NOT the issue here.
Microsoft (for all its inherent deficiencies) gives me ALL of MS Office & 1TB of ‘OneDrive’ for $69 a year. Yes, $69 a year. That is reasonable. So, I pay $69/year for ALL of Office (i.e., Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Notes, Access, Outlook) & BLOODY Adobe thinks I should give them $155/year just for Acrobat.
No bloody way, Jose.
Just a matter of principle. I don’t know about you, BUT I don’t like being exploited.
So, over the last few days I have been playing around with ‘Foxit PDF Editor‘ ($159 one-time) & ‘Soda PDF Professional‘ ($48). See images above. They are BOTH good. Appear to work flawlessly. I am still LEARNING to fine tune them to get my IMAGES to the extent I desire.
To this end, I have to tell you that Foxit has been BEYOND AMAZING. They appear to have 24×7 telephone help — & good help at that. I called them — even though I am still on the trial — & asked for help. They have been WONDERFUL. So, responsive & helpful.
Soda, on the other hand, only appears to have e-mail support. Given their prices, I can afford to buy them BOTH & have them side-by-side. Plus, the option of saving to PDF directly from Word & then using Foxit or Soda to combine the PDFs into a book.
Yesterday, I was feeling a bit dejected. That Adobe had won. That I had no choice BUT to buy a new Acrobat. But, not so today. I have a third option! SMILE. I have two old PCs, running Windows 7, that BOTH have Acrobat 9. I can just keep them in mothballs & use them when I need to produce my FINAL completed PDF for a book! Remember, I have contingency plans for my contingency plans.
But, right now, I am growing more & more impressed with Foxit & Soda — Foxit, the BEST, because of their support. I like to know that there will be support if I run into trouble. For now, I am happy to say, with conviction, SCREE Adobe!
