Ice storm incoming

The upcoming weekend is promising to be cold and slushy.  It will probably be just freezing rain around here, though snow is still a possibility.  Either way, it's going to be a nightmare for traffic, and there's always the possibility of power outages during events like this.  Freezing rain is particularly bad, because it weighs heavily on tree branches, and many of them break off, and some of them fall on power lines.

I'm reminded of the ice storm of 2000.  That one was crazy.  I still remember the sharp scent of pine sap saturating the air due to all the ice-sheathed branches that broke off.  The AJC has a photo gallery of the event here:

https://www.ajc.com/lifestyles/photos-look-back-the-2000-ice-storm/OAW7q77cx9W1iDxQSeL8EM/

Georgia Power is excellent about getting power restored after an outage, so I'm not worried about being without power for days at a time.  The roads are a different matter, though, and I'm expecting lots of car crashes.  And other states might fare differently.  Here's a map of the affected area based on current projections:

 

If you live in the affected area, I suggest getting all your preparations done tomorrow.  And by "preparations," I mean get whatever you need to ride out the weather event for several days without having to leave your home. 

Hoosiers win it all

We've all seen some crazy things in the 2020s.  Murder hornets, a novel new virus coupled with global lockdowns, and toilet paper shortages in 2020.  A 100-year flood in the mountains of North Carolina followed by heroic deeds from Amish builders and race-car drivers in 2024.  And plenty more, more than I care to list in this blog post.  It seems like we're living in an inverted world in which the normally least likely things are now the most likely to actually happen.

And now we've seen perhaps the most unlikely thing of all: the Indiana Hoosiers winning a national championship, not in basketball as one might think, but in football, the sport in which they've been perennial doormats for as long as anyone can remember.

Congratulations, Hoosiers.  Y'all earned it against a very tough Miami team that never quit, and you've made history.  More than that; y'all were due after so many years of doldrums.  It was a real joy watching you play the game at such a high level of proficiency.

Enjoy your moment.  :) 

The CES boost

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was this past week.  I don't go to these things, nor do I really keep up with them.  But I did notice a strange spike in the share price of one of my stocks.  After a little research, I found out the sector in general had risen, not just one stock, so this wasn't a company-specific thing.  It was enthusiasm for the sector.

That sector was computer memory, stuff like RAM and hard drives.  Companies like Nvidia get all the media coverage, and rightly so, but the memory-makers are getting some investor attention now.  It turns out AI needs this stuff, too, not just the video cards.

The spike in share price was brief, just a blip on the radar, and the shares have since pulled back quite a bit.  The gains have mostly vanished.  But the event might be a harbinger of what the next "hot thing" will be on Wall Street.

Holiday inflation

No, I'm not talking about monetary inflation.  I mean the length of the holiday season.  It just seems to keep getting longer and longer.

If you start with Halloween preparations, then the holiday season starts in October.  Then comes Thanksgiving.  Then Christmas.  And along the way in November and December, you have to get your Christmas shopping squared away.  Then we get New Year's Eve and the associated bowl games, but bowl season keeps getting extended, and now it goes into the third week of January, finally wrapping up on the 19th. 

It's basically three months of holiday stuff. 

This sort of thing happened in the Roman Empire, too.  They kept adding more and more state holidays, and it eventually got to the point where basically no work was getting done for half the year except by slaves, and even the slaves often got to enjoy the holidays in some circumstances.

Over the long term, this becomes a strategic matter and eventually an existential matter.  If your people are barely working, then other countries with more industrious people will economically surpass you in the global economy.  And if your country is blessed with natural resources, then those other countries will eventually turn their covetous eyes your way and wonder why they shouldn't just take the land away from the lazy bums who live there, move their own people in, and put the place to a more productive use.

I suppose this is just the natural cycle of societies.  "Weak men create hard times" and all that.  I just wish I didn't have to watch it slowly but inexorably happen here where I live.

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone reading this survived New Year's Eve unscathed.  I know things can get a little wild sometimes.

The 2020s have not been the best decade ever, at least for me.  Hopefully 2026 will be a good year for all of us. 

In case you missed it, silver got up near 80 bucks and ounce recently.  It has since pulled back a bit, which wasn't a surprise at all given its parabolic climb.  But yeah, I didn't see this year's silver run-up coming at all.

Stocks became overbought recently according to the oscillators, so they've pulled back a bit in recent days.  The Dow Transports have been particularly strong in recent months, and that's an encouraging sign, because that index is often seen as a bellwether for the economy as a whole.  It represents the movement of goods and services, so more movement equals more economic activity, or so the conventional wisdom goes.

Oil seems to have reached a support level at around 57 bucks a barrel, and I'm pretty bullish on the black fuel right now.  I've got numerous oil stocks, and I'm tempted to pick up some more.  If Europe decides to go to war with Russia in 2026--and don't laugh at the notion, because they continue to beat the war drums about it, and they've only gotten more bellicose in recent months with multiple countries talking about conscription--or if China locks horns with Taiwan or the U.S. or India or whoever, then I suspect the price of oil will skyrocket.  After all, you can't go to war without fuel.

I had a successful promotion recently on Kobo.  Thanks to everyone who bought Caverns of Mercury and/or Cities of Mars and put some money in my pocket.  I hope y'all enjoy the books.

The A.I. revolution was arguably the biggest story of 2025.  How will the industry fare in 2026?  Who knows.  I can predict some disruption, but what form it takes is anyone's guess. 

That's all for now.  I hope you make the new year the best one for yourself it can possibly be.  :)