Value?

There is a strange little game out in the web... Blogshares.

It's a fantasy stock market, where blogs are the companies in trade.

The simple game is based on information flow. The more people there are who want your information, the more valuable you are. The more people to whom you refer others, the less valuable you are. They measure it by tracking links.

Think of it as cash flow... people spend the time/effort to point you away from their blog, and to someone elses. That blog must have merit. I have no idea the algorithms being used, but each reference from a blog has a value, (right now pecunium has an outgoing value of B$296.83, or B$122.22, or perhaps both, there seems to be a slight hiccup in the program, and I'm listed twice. Same product, very different values...), and the ratio of incoming/outgoing links is used as the P/E ratio.

You can own more than one blog... which implies the system is sort of gameable (I've made a few bucks in buying and selling friends blogs, and may have pumped their value a bit because I refer to blogs I like...) On the other hand, I bought shares in my own blog, and the price dropped.


A share in this blog is either (because of that odd double listing) about B$12, or B$15. A share in Josh Marshall's Talking Points or Dave Neiwerts Orcinus will set one back B$15,409.28 or, B$10,648.10 respectively (then again, they are both listed as overpriced, and have no share available... so the best thing is for one of them to refer to you, with a value of B$25,000.00, for Marshall, and B$2,062.16 for Niewert (though with the number of links Marhall puts out, and the value of one being more than the cost of a share, I don't see the overvaluation myself).

When a blog is listed, the owner has 1,000 shares set aside, which it might be worth cashing in, if one wants to play. I ought to have done that when someone who saw me as a cash cow started buying up all my free stock, shoving the price up to about B$40 a share, and then cashing out, putting it back down to about B$17.

For those who want a larger readership, there are also ways to buy ads. A bit of time, and voila, you can be an ad on a page where people who read blogs, spend some time.


It's free, and there are a lot of other games in the game, no way in the world I can imagine spending the time to learn them all, but this one has some amusing aspects, it gives one a sense of the people who are reading one, and not commenting on it, here.

And the self interest aspect

If you should decide to dabble in this little game hit this link http://blogshares.com/?referer=18530

That gets me a few chips, which means I can advertise, or something.

Home

On the domestic front, we are unpacking. That may take a few more weeks. The landlord/roommate is pretty nice. Much better than the last set-up, with the senior-tenant and the poorly run communal aspects of things. The three of us went shopping at Costco Saturday, reminding Maia and I of the things we need, but haven't had to buy, because some member of whatever house we were sharing had it.

Alexa being there meant when we thought of something, we'd be told if it was present. Odd things you'd expect, aren't here (e.g. I opened a can of tuna with my Swiss Army Knife tonight). The snakes are less happy than they might be (we've not got them heated, so they think winter is coming, which it is, but we'd rather not have it coming right now). The mice are in a strange shed outside. It's about 12'x8', has a strange door (5' high and 29" wide) has eaves, and is about nine inches off the ground, on 4x4s with wheels.

On the very up side the dogs can run around. The yard isn't large, and is mostly concrete (with sand... there is no soil here, all around) but it has a decent fence, and the radio fence could actually be set up. This is so much better. For the past year and half they've had to live on chains, because Token will get out, and Oliver will eat (or at least kill) chickens, even if Token would put up with being the only one chained (when taking them for a walk, Token has to be released/leashed first, or the baying is beyond mortal bearing).

Them not being chained up also means I feel better about playing with them... because standing and paying attention to one, and then the other (can't have them too close, lest the chains tangle) and then leaving, made me feel so guilty that a couple of minutes at a time, a couple of times a day was about all I could bear.

When the Lab leaves (our landlord had to start looking for someone to fill the other room the day we came to look at the place. The other tenant is moving back to Ariz.) I can buy Oliver some tennis balls. I'd do it now, but if Barkley (the lab) were to go for one, they'd scuffle, and that wouldn't go well for Barkley... Oliver having split the lip of another Lab, larger than he, the last time someone tried to steal a tennis ball... Barkley is much smaller than Oliver, even if he is at the top of the pecking order, because he gets to come inside).


For us, well we could use more space... between us, even with what we have left in storage, we have more stuff than we have room. A couple of bookshelves will help, and making a pantry in the garage will help some more (which is a good thing because we could fill the kitchen, and Alexa has her stuff already here... who knows what the new roommate will bring... the present roommate seems to not cook. A nice enough woman, but I don't pretend to understand how someone gets to be in one's late thirties and depend on other people, i.e. restaurants, to do one's cooking. Some place like Mexico, where the facilities aren't always present, and one gets things prepared at the corner, ok, but here, with a gas range, an oven and a microwave?).

Orchids in the windows, pictures on the walls, and the difficult questions (animals, and housemates) well resolved... we can live with this.

Thank heaven for paranoia

This was lost, but only about 2/5ths of it had to be reconstructed, because I did ctrl c on a large chunk of it, just in case LJ ate it. I ought to have done that again when I spell-checked and previewed, but half a loaf is better than none.

++++

On the domestic front, we are unpacking. That may take a few more weeks. The landlord/roommate is pretty nice. Much better than the last set-up, with the senior-tenant and the poorly run communal aspects of things. The three of us went shopping at Costco Saturday, reminding Maia and I of the things we need, but haven't had to buy, because some member of whatever house we were sharing had it.

Alexa (the roommate/landlord) being with us meant when we thought of something, we'd be told if it was present. Odd things you'd expect, aren't here (e.g. I opened a can of tuna with my Swiss Army Knife tonight). The snakes are less happy than they might be (we've not got them heated, so they think winter is coming, which it is, but we'd rather not have it coming right now). The mice are in a strange shed outside. It's about 12'x8', has a strange door (5' high and 29" wide) has eaves, and is about nine inches off the ground, on 4x4s with wheels.

On the very up side the dogs can run around. The yard isn't large, and is mostly concrete (with sand... there is no soil here, all around) but it has a decent fence, and the radio fence could actually be set up. This is so much better. For the past year and half they've had to live on chains, because Token will get out, and Oliver will eat (or at least kill) chickens, even if Token would put up with being the only one chained (when taking them for a walk, Token has to be released/leashed first, or the baying is beyond mortal bearing).

Them not being chained up also means I feel better about playing with them... because standing and paying attention to one, and then the other (can't have them too close, lest the chains tangle) and then leaving, made me feel so guilty that a couple of minutes at a time, a couple of times a day was about all I could bear.

When the Lab leaves (our landlord had to start looking for someone to fill the other room the day we came to look at the place. The other tenant is moving back to Ariz.) I can buy Oliver some tennis balls. I'd do it now, but if Barkley (the lab) were to go for one, they'd scuffle, and that wouldn't go well for Barkley... Oliver having split the lip of another Lab, larger than he, the last time someone tried to steal a tennis ball... Barkley is much smaller than Oliver, even if he is at the top of the pecking order, because he gets to come inside).


As for us... well we have almost enough space, if one declines to consider removing what we have in storage to here. a few more bookcases would always be useful, but that's a perennial fact of life.

The kitchen is too small. It's too small for just our stuff (though we probably have more stuff than most. I have three mortar and pestle combinations, and the grinder dedicated to spices, as well as the burr-grinder for coffee... Maia's kitchen aid, the food mill, the cutting boards, the knives... if we have one thing which is going to be under-represented in the wedding registries, kitchen goodies are it). But Alexa is more than willing to make some garage space into a pantry. That's needful because the we don't know what the new housemate will have, and the leaving one has damn all in the cupboards (I don't understand how someone in her mid/late 30s can not cook. I can see where living in Mexico, or someplace without easy access to the means might hire someone to prepare food, but here... with an oven, a gas range and a microwave leaving it to McDonald's, et al seems ... wrong... but that's me, whom akirlu pointed out, when I was barely in my twenties, might have a house with no bed, but would have sharp knives, cheese and good olive oil in the kitchen... my perspective might be skewed)

In the meantime, as the odds and ends are sorted out... orchids in the window, artwork on the walls, housemates and animals sorted out, and in good humor, we can live with this.