I’ve been practicing day trading since April of last year. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before but at the beginning of this month I started trading live with cash. This is real day trading not in the simulator. Real money is at risk and I could lose it all. Insert evil laugh here.
Much of what people call intra day trading can be summed up in one sentence: profit more than you lose. Sounds really easy but it’s not. There’s so many pitfalls you can find yourself in if you’re not careful.
C-19 Sucks. Not travelling sucks. Having my guys unhappy at home sucks. And I’m losing the battle to continue doing what we’ve been doing for the past 2 years.
At what point does my life, which will probably be shorter than average due to the shit I’ve seen and done over the years, need to continue on with occasional trips away?
I’m very close to booking a ticket and finding somewhere to go. England just legislated the removal of testing for folks flying in from abroad. Maybe I go there for a week just to see what the world is like beyond my own city?
If I don’t do something interesting soon, I’m going to lose my shit.
I’m not even an American but I find it interesting to watch what the political parties SAY they will do and what they ACTUALLY do. Great short video on how the Democrats are doing in the blue states where the Republicans don’t have much power to interfere.
Yay. We’re headed out for a few days of R&R about an hour away. Mostly it’s to get out of the damnable city while the ‘get drunk in cowboy garb’ folk are busying doing what they do. Even just the past couple of day have been intolerable.
It’s not Florida trip but it’s better than repeatedly being kicked in the face with soccer cleats. I think.
On another note, I’ve started studying intraday trading of the stock market. It’s an interesting topic and it’s been in the news over the past six months so it’s piqued my curiosity. My new morning process is getting up at 0600, taking a look at what the markets did overnight and selecting one or two stocks to play off the open using a simulator account that’s not real money. So far, in 5 weeks, I’m down almost $2k in play money. If/When I can get that simulated account in the green, I might consider using a real funded account to play around with it in the mornings.
Aim for the sky; even if you miss you’ll be among the stars. Or some such shit.
UPDATE: This fix has been confirmed by CDPR to be bunk. I just doesn’t do what we think it does. They suggest that the placebo effect it created might have been from needing to reboot the machine after making the changes which did allow the game to run better. Too bad; really good placebo because I was seeing some significant improvements after implementing.
Just a quick note: I’ve started playing Cyberpunk 2077 and it’s pretty good. Not “This is an amazing RPG that makes me feel like I’m in the world” good but still could be worse.
What I wanted to mention is a Reddit post here (https://redd.it/kccabx) that talks about improving performance on older equipment. I have an i7 2600k paired with a GTX 1070TI graphics card that are both a bit long in the tooth. Still working fine but getting into Cyberpunk made me realize how old they are.
When I first started playing, my machine could not handle the native resolution of my monitor, 2560X1440. I had to drop down to 1920X1080 to get decent frames (>40 fps) at the medium preset. Now with the changes I’ve made to the config files using the information provided in that post in the link above, I’ve been able to get back into native resolution AND run in a high preset with standard frames (>= 60 fps). I’ve already put almost 30 hours into the game and to now finally be playing with a great graphics.
If you’re not rocking the latest CPU and GPU and are experiencing poor performance, you owe it to yourself to visit the link above and give the fixes a try. Backup the original file first in case something bad happens so reverting is quick and easy!
Spilios (Uncle Louis) Tsielos died on the 14th of September, 2020. What a shitty year. I was notified of his death by a cousin posting the information on fucking Facebook. I’m really unhappy with that but it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise. I’m not close with that side of the family, as I’ll delve into more as we go along. Regardless, I got the information nearly twelve hours after the fact by a social media post. How do you relay information of that gravity on Facebook without second guessing yourself?
I’ve included a grab of said post here for … posterity’s sake.
Geez, really….
I’m not sure why there were dum bells in the background but considering the decision making that went into posting this already, I’m not going to waste the mental exercise in trying to figure it out. Also, I’m not really a big part of that area of the family (or any family, for that matter) so I’m not about to get my knickers in a twist.
My Father and I had a complicated relationship. I’ve spent more time with my wife then I ever did with my Father (twenty years in November). At some point I might sit down and do a proper estimate on the number of months we were together throughout my life. It should signify how low that number will be when I display my confidence in being able to figure it out without much trouble.
It was only recently, within the last 2 years, that I learned my Dad was a radio repair technician in the Greek army when he did his mandatory military time. I’ve never thought of my Father as a technical person and to be told this information shook my understanding of who I thought my Dad was, right to the core. We spoke, really for the first time, about some of the work he was responsible for and I was amazed that he would do that sort of work.
Throughout my life, my Dad has always worked in restaurants. Periods of my life in which my Dad was around involved being in, going to or leaving from restaurants. When I was an infant, it was Uncle Louis’ Pizza. In my preteen years it was the White Spot. Later it was Yianni’s Taverna or Spartacus, both in Edmonton. Later teen years, before I stopped spending my summers with my Dad it was Villa Caruso or L&W in Jasper. Our life together, for what it was, revolved around restaurants. In all of these roles he was either the Manager, Head Server or, for a short time, a cook.
So consider my amazement to discover that he’d been in a technical role in the army. But this, dear reader, is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The things that I don’t know about my Father are legion and I’m afraid to make the next statement but I’m going to do it anyways.
It doesn’t, nor did it, matter.
There were several times through my life that my Dad showed up for stuff. He was there when we won the Junior Football High School City Championship. He was there when I ended up in the hospital after getting cracked in the head by an aggressive douche bag wielding a bat. That was three days in the Peter Lougheed that were a little scary but he showed up. He also made the trek to New Brunswick when Sylvia and I were married.
And I’m trying to think of any other of my ‘shit, I wish I had my Dad here’ moments that occurred during my life. There were many. Many. And he wasn’t there.
I wont’ speak ill of my Dad. He wasn’t a perfect man; few of us are. But I used his failures in life as a crutch to keep myself from taking some risks.
I didn’t gamble until I was in my 40’s simply because I was sure it would lead me to a ruined life. So far, that’s turned out to be false. Perhaps it’s an age thing? I started gambling far beyond when my Dad started playing poker. I’m more mature, understand statistical risk better than my Dad (I think) and I’m not willing to bet my future, and that of my wife, on a session of Blackjack.
Thinking about children, I’m positive that I would do poorly, even more poorly than my Dad. Is that, too, just a fear which is incorrect? I don’t think so but now knowing that my personality enjoys balanced risk, this is not one I’m willing to take. I’m not willing to fuck up a person whom I’m supposed to be caring for. What are the odds of that happening? Too high for me.
This is the last picture I have of my Dad when he seemed happy. This is from September 2016 and we’re with my aunt Dina, the last surviving member of that generation.
Me, My Aunt Dina and my Father, Spilios (Uncle Louis) Tsielos
I have a feeling I’ll be dealing with this for a while. That’s it’s not just going to stop one day and all will be right in the world. Writing things down, finding reminders to my state of mind is helpful for me, very much like a map.
Where I was, where I am and where I might very well wander off to.
And this video might just be the motivation I needed.
But seriously, I’ve been wanting one of these Nomatic bags for some time now. They’ve got a serious sale going on, I’ll assume due to the old C-19, and it’s substantially discounted. If I pick one up, I’ll post my thoughts on it here.
Sly bought me a Secret Labs Titan chair for my birthday and I’m quite happy with it so far. Very comfortable, it was easy to put together and it will recline back to almost vertical if I really wanted to. Also comes with a cool pillow that will allow me to lay my head back instead of it rolling forward giving me whiplash and shocking me awake.
The chair comes with a three year warranty which the company will extend by two years if you’re willing to do a little ‘advertising’ for them through social media. See below:
CSS formatting sucks so if you want to read my message, you’ll need to highlight it with your mouse.
I don’t feel too badly about stumping for Secretlabs; seems like a good trade off for a few extra years of warranty. If the chair makes it to the 5 year mark (and it should based on the construction I witnessed as I put it together) I would probably consider purchasing a brand new one.
My previous chair was a Leap version 2 I purchased from a guy that did office renos. I’m pretty sure he resold the old chairs he scavenged to make some money on the side, not that I’m complaining. I had that chair for over 10 years and it served me well. This new chair is already making my spine do things it hasn’t done in a while and I’m quite happy with the new-found levels of support.
I would definitely suggest anyone that spends a significant amount of time in front of a computer to get something similar. You have to spend a good chunk of change on a good chair that will support your body while you destroy it from inactivity.
