Google stock hits 600 USD

I don’t do any sort of stock investing, but this is really big news. I knew that it would happen, but just seeing the numbers seems surreal. Heavy investing in Google ads have sent Googles’ stock roaring through the roof.

I’ve always been impressed with Google as a company. Their out-of-the box management model should be the one that all companies use for their knowledge staff.

How they get the best and brightest to work for them here

If you haven’t seen google finance before, it’s really neat, by the way. Click Here to open the page for jsut the “GOOG” stock. it’s interesting how the value graph is zoomable, and there are marked points on that graph, showing news stories to the right that may have had a bearing on the stock rising or falling. The related blog posts and enough stats to choke your average accountant, and you have lots to look at for any sort of casual, fantasy, or serious investing you might be doing.

The same info page at Yahoo shows a good graph and the headlines, and of course, a lot of the same information, but it just doesn’t seem to be cross referenced in one view the way that the Google page is. I did notice that there is a beta graph on Yahoo that is much more robust and AJAXed out, and I really like some of the features, lik having the main competition for whatever company you are looking at listed just to the left, as well as benchmark indexes.

Of course, I’m looking at these without any background in investing, and knowing only the bare basics of what the stats on these pages mean.
They both are much nicer, friendlier, and approachable than what you see on the “serious” investing sites. I mean, look at this one… …sheesh!

Yesterday, the WordPress group released an update to the butt-kicking blog software I’ve been using for years now. I did the upgrade in about 10 minutes total, then found a couple of spots where some old plugin code that’s outdated now (read: UTW) was mangling a page here and there, and I think it’s all Kosher now, easily fixed by editing the templates.

There are a ton of bugfixes, and some really groovy enhancements. The main enhancement is that tagging is handled by WP rather than by any number of plugins. I’m still roaming through, noticing the updates, but I can say after a short while using it that the admin area is responding a lot faster for me, and it’s not my connection. I’ve noticed the speed using three different internet connections.

Mouseclone Did the upgrade, though, and something went awry… I’m not sure of the details, because I had to run off for a bit, and when I’d returned, it looked like a tornado had passed through his database. Word to the wise: backups. Backups BACKUPS!
The mantra is and has always been:

“If you don’t have at least three copies of a piece of data on different media, the data does not exist.”

I say this, knowing full well that I didn’t make a new, full backup before doing the update to the WP bits, but here’s the cool part of the story: he made a backup, and looking at it right now, everything is back up and rocking out.

In the 1989 Tim Burton rendition of the Batman story, we see the cast of characters evolve into the colorful, larger-than-life, dysfunctional and diabolical characters we all remembered from the comic books of many years before.  As The Joker makes his first public appearance, accompanied by a recording of Prince singing:

Systematic overthrow of the underclass
Hollywood conjures images of the past
New world needs spiritually
That will last
Ive seen the future and it will be

Ive seen the future and it will be
Ive seen the future and it works

When you were young, you could see the future.  You had a plan, a view, you had a calendar in mind of the ages you would be doing certain things, and had an idea of what your daily life would be like as an adult.

how close did you get? 

By the time I was around nine or ten, I had pegged my age at things like changing jobs, getting married, buying a house… 

But I have been way off on things like flying cars (age 31) among other things. I suppose overall, my 10-year-old self was batting at around .450 or so.

How about you?

Just like we read about in the comic books when we were young, everyone is looking forward to having Jetsons-style flying cars within our lifetime. NASA wants to nudge things along:

NASA Sponsoring Flying Car Contest

But what’s this? There a company out there that has been designing and building these for a long time. Check out the video on this page: Click here. It shows a test flight of the vehicle, and states that the company is ready to go into full production soon. How exciting is that? You don’t have to worry about constructing roads. Just set up some balloon-cones or something. The company that is making these is named after Dr Moller. All of their models and a series of videos are available at their website.