Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

At the risk of boring the 60 percent of my audience who are, in fact, business and technology journalists and already know this, I was pretty surprised today when I took a look at what”s been going on with Internet stocks.

I was led on this journey by reading an article (not from Bloomberg … sorry) about Amazon.com”s quarterly results. The piece included terms such as “ratings upgrade”, “price target” and analysts “looking beyond” the fact that Amazon did, in fact, lose money in the quarter.

In these days of the Internet bust, those terms have kind of an old-fashioned Monty Burns feel to them. Kind of like when you hear Don Sutton call Marcus Giles the “second sacker”.

So, thrown back in memory to the days of online grocery shopping and pre-IPO stock options, I decided to take a look at how the big online players have been performing of late.

Year to date, Amazon.com”s stock is up just over 100%. Yahoo and DoubleClick are each up about 80%, InfoSpace (remember them?) is up about 70%. Juniper Networks - up about 90%; Priceline - 140%. Even “Net Dogs EarthLink and TerraLycos have managaged to rise 30% this year.

Ebay, also known as the world”s only really profitable public Internet company, has gone up 60% this year despite having never really taken a hard fall like the aforementioned firms.

Of course, the stock of everybody except Ebay has been flat or worse over the 5-year period marking the rise of Internet stocks (Ebay is still up an amazing 1,400% from its IPO).

But when you take a look at what”s been going on elsewhere in the market this year, it shows what a roll the Net stocks are on.

The Dow is up around 10%, as is the S&P 500. The whole of Nasdaq, which benefits from the Internet rise, is up slightly less than 25%. Microsoft, which you might think should track somewhat with Internet companies, is slightly down in price this year.

You don”t hear much about Internet stocks anymore, do you? I guess that”s typical of the media. 1999 was the “year of Internet stocks” like 2000 had the “summer of the shark” and this year was SARS central. You have to move on to the next thing.

But here”s a prediction … Internet stocks get back in the news when Google goes public. May not be this year, but it”ll be end of 2004 at the latest.

So maybe I”ll start firing Squawk Box back up in the mornings, renew that subscription to Business 2.0 and upgrade my Ameritrade account to include real-time level-two streaming quotes. Day trading might be more profitable than day blogging.

We had a great time Saturday down in Hawkinsville at the Miss Georgia Prisons 2003 pageant. The staff at Pulaski State Prison really pulled together a great event. Next year the pageant comes to East Atlanta (Metro State Prison), so mark your calendars for July 24.

The show didn”t get a lot of play in the Atlanta press (The Hawkinsville Dispatch-Union ran a nice two-page spread), but I think the finalists deserve some recognition.

If you don”t know, contestants - who must be between 18 and 24 - are judged on four criteria:

1) Looks
2) Talent
3) Offenses
4) Scars, marks, tattoos

Finishing as 4th runner-up (5th place overall), was Lashay Adams.

Lashay is 23 and is 5 years into a life sentence for murder at Pulaski. She”s 5″8″, 145 pounds. Lashay has a discolored abdomen, but no other scars or tattoos.

Personally, I was surprised that Lashay finished top 10, much less top 5. Her “talent” was interpretive dance. Enough said there. Sure, she”s a murderer, and the judges are always swayed by blonde hair and belly rashes, but I just don”t see it.

3rd runner-up was Serena Cochran.

Serena is 22 and is 4 years into a 10-year term for robbery and theft by taking at Washington State. She”s 5″2″, 125 pounds. She has scars on her right hand, abdomen, left leg and right leg, as well as a medium-sized tattoo on her left ankle.

I think this “retro” thing has gotten a bit out of hand. Selena was born in 1981, so how come her hairstyle is from 1980? At the pageant, she had the Olivia Newton-John thing working; even sang “Physical” as her talent. A bit much for me. Nice scars, though - well balanced.

2nd runner-up was Frankie Menefee.

Frankie is just 18 years old and is a year into her 6-year gig for robbery and aggravated assault at Metro State. She”s 5″3″, 133 pounds. She sports a scar on the left side of her face, but no discolorations or tattoos.

Frankie rocks! She was Diva Supreme Saturday night. She managed to pull off a solo-version of Lady Marmalade that sounded just like Christina, Lil Kim and all those girls. She”s also a local girl, having pulled her crimes in DeKalb County, so I was really pulling for her. But she”s only 18 and hopefully won”t be released before next year”s pageant, so I think she”ll have the home-cell advantage when the show comes to Metro.

1st runner-up was Ashley Scarborough.

Ashley is 20 years old and is just 6 weeks into a 5-year stint at Metro for drug charges. She”s 5″2″, 126 pounds and has small tattoos on her left ankle and right arm, and a medium-sized tat on her left shoulder. The tattoos are nicely complemented by the scar and discoloration on the left side of her body.

Ashley”s take on Britney Spears” “I”m a Slave 4 U” really got the crowd rocking (especially 2nd runner-up and fellow Metro inmate Frankie, who I think was taking Ashley”s performance somewhat literally), and she scored big points on talent. Folks I talked to in the crowd thought Ashley”s less-than-impressive drug charges would hurt her, but turns out her “misc. misdemeanor” charge involved lewd behavior with a Coke bottle, and the judges loved that.

Miss Georgia Prisons 2003
Jessica Juanita Cates

Jessie is 20 years old and is 2 months into an 18-year gig at Metro for burglary and related crimes. She”s 5″5″, 165 pounds with scars on both arms and tattoos on her neck and left wrist.

Wow, who”d have thought that? Jessie Cates? Not exactly the best-looking gal in the bunch, and her Eminem act was pretty weak if you ask me. But she rose to the top on the strength of her record. Burglary, Conspiracy and “Concealing Death of Another”. Powerful. The buzz among the judges was that her arm scars were self-inflicted, and nothing wows a crowd like a neck tattoo.

So congratulations Jessie, and congratulations to all the girls who entered this year. You”re all winners (except for the being-in-prison thing) in my book.

.. or nobody but Charles is reading my blog now.

See, in the piece I did Thursday (”Finally, a title for LSU football”), I threw in a bit about our first ESPY, which was for Warren Morris” homerun to beat Miami in the CWS.

Trying to spice the piece up with a picture of Warren, I did a Google image search for “Warren Morris”. The first result (which is the photo shown) was of Warren Morris, director of security at Howard Community College. So, still recovering from my night out with Tom, I thought it would be fun to put his picture there, with no explanation but that “here”s Warren.”

Incidentally, clicking on his picture takes you to the HCC page featuring Mr. Morris” department”s Mission Statement, a fine, 4-point statement that includes “Evaluate continuously campus security trends and needs”.

Anyway, I get just one email about it. Of course, it”s eagle-eyed Charles, who said “Dude, I don”t think that”s Warren Morris.” My reply? “Yeah, I know. Funny, isn”t it?”

Maybe the comedy is too obtuse, or maybe it”s just not funny. I was rolling, myself.

But then again, my perfect Halloween costume idea is to put my arm in a cast and act like my arm is broken, even though it”s not. [crickets chirping ... tumbleweeds blowing by ... blank stares among the crowd].

Sure, we got our butts kicked in the Cotton Bowl, gave away the SEC West championship and the baseball team beat a hasty retreat from the College World Series, but all of that is now forgotten, for LSU has won an ESPY.

Our ESPY comes in the coveted and highly-competitive category of “Best Play”. It was awarded, of course, for the dramatic last-second touchdown catch by Devery Henderson to beat Kentucky in Lexington last fall.

To wit:

That”s Devery heading for the endzone. The lip-readers among you will notice the Kentucky player on the right is saying “Holy fucking shit. He caught the ball, and he”s scoring the winning touchdown. And here we were about to win our first home SEC game in Jesus knows how long, and this fuckwad is ruining it. I knew I should have gone to Iowa State like my momma told me to.”

Not pictured is then-Kentucky head coach Guy Morriss, who said at the time “Holy fucking shit. He caught the ball, and he”s scoring the winning touchdown. And here I am, soaked from the premature celebratory water dump given me by my fatass quarterback, and we”ve lost the fucking game. What a fucking loser school this is. I should leave and coach at Baylor.”

The ESPY is the second for LSU, which also won in 1997 for Warren Morris” walk-off homerun to win the College World Series over Miami. Here”s a picture of Warren Morris for those of you who may not remember him:

I was on the road today at lunch and, being as TiVo does not make a device for radio yet, I heard a commercial that has me wondering if I actually heard what I think I did.

The spot was for D. Geller and Son - the well known and generally despised discount jeweler here in town.

[as an aside, the wife and I had an amusing encounter with D. Geller when I was shopping for engagement rings. I had no intention of buying anything from them, but went there to check out different diamond cuts (to buy online later). Pushy-ass salesman dude pressed me to buy on the spot so much I ended up saying "Look, if you"re going to keep pushing me to buy something right now, I"m just going to leave and never come back", at which point he said "Well, you should just leave then." We left]

Anyhow, the concept of this particular spot was that overpriced cheap jewelry makes a better gift for special occasions than traditional things such as flowers or candy.

They go on and on about how diamond jewelry is the gift that lasts forever and all that, then one of the spokesmorons says - to paraphrase - “she”ll be enjoying the diamond long after the chocolate has made its way to the Chattahoochee.”

Am I misunderstanding that comment, or is he actually referring to the human digestive and sewage processing systems? That”s how the chocolate would end up in the Chattahoochee, isn”t it? I don”t think he”s saying your lady will be so upset with getting chocolate that she”ll pull over on the Lester and Virginia Maddox bridge and dump her gift into the water.

Of course, people who would enjoy this subtle brand of fecal humor are D. Geller”s primary market, so maybe this is good marketing.

I find a lot of cool things (and a lot of crap) online, and rarely am I moved to share things with others. This is partly because I really don”t care about the happiness of others, and partly because I don”t want to be the guy passing things around on the Internet that my friends don”t care about or have seen 100 times already.

But the new Google toolbar (in beta at the moment, I believe) is such a great freaking utility, I had to share.

I actually came across a link to it on the Blogspot homepage, and one of the features is a button that creates a link to whatever webpage you”re on and inserts it into your blog editor. Kind of nifty if you”re not an HTML person (Will), but not the main selling point for me.

The absolute killer piece of this app is its pop-up blocker. It”s flawless. I have used other blockers, but all I”ve used in the past had fatal flaws. Typically, blockers stop any windows from popping up; even ones you want to see (such as my Mindspring web email, which spawns new windows to read messages).

But Google”s figured that part out. Their tool blocks unwanted popups with absolutely no interference with your use of the web.

Another nifty thing is it actually shows you how many popups it”s blocked (I”m at 134 at work after about a week). That”s 134 clicks I didn”t have to make to kill the pop-ups. Very empowering to know that.

And, by the way, it is also a Google toolbar … you can search Google by entering terms in the toolbar box. On the face of it, that”s the purpose of the toolbar - drive search traffic to Google - but the real value is the blocker.

So get it.

Google Toolbar

(That link, by the way, was created using their blogger button)