This blog survives a spam attack
Last week my blog started getting a much higher amount of comment spam. I use Wordpress for this blog and have the excellent Askimet anti-spam program included, but things started getting out of control. Before last week I would the spam filter would usually catch 20-30 comment spam per day and a couple a week would get through to the moderation phase. By the middle of last week, I was getting over 300 spam a day and about a dozen a day were getting into the regular comments and needed to be removed.
I finally figured out that the majority of the spam was trackback spam, so I spent the weekend dis-enabling trackbacks on every one of my posts. With over 170 posts, this took quite a bit of time! I do not have any use for trackbacks, they are so 2006 blogging to build traffic, so they will not be missed. I will just spend less time weeding the spam out.
I am sure this is of little interest to most, but the work involved kept me from posting for a few days, so I wanted to put up a few words about it.
New reading material
I have felt stagnated lately with the financial news and blog I have been reading, so I decided to research some new sources. I went to one of my favorite sources of information, Jeff at a Dash of Insight and clicked through his blogroll.
I found some interesting reading and ended up adding a few links to my blogroll. I use my blogroll as my personal reading resource. I click through it at least every couple of days to see what is new. My interests tend to be a bit focused, but these sites or blogs usually have good and interesting reading. Enjoy!
Note: The picture is of something growing in my backyard. Trying to fill a little space.
A couple of days off and other thoughts
I am going to be away up country for a few days and leaving the laptop behind. Probably good time to take a few days off. I find it interesting that the page views on this site go up and down at about the same rate and time the market does. When the market is going up, many more seem to want to read about investments, on the way down fewer want to read about stocks.
I am pretty much fully invested in stocks (with the money in the accounts for that purpose) at this time. I made a couple of purchase as prices of interesting stocks fell, but no where near the current lows. I am not a good predictor of when the market will go down, and also not when it will rebound. My process is to look for good companies with stocks that will appreciate or pay an excellent income over time. From this point they are more attractive than they were 10% or 15% higher.
A new news cycle for earnings is about to hit, so I am looking forward to see how the companies of the stocks I discuss here have fared in there pursuit of profits. Fear currently rules the market, but some good earnings news can turn that around.
I hope the market rebounds significantly in the next few days, but the emotional swings of the overall market are not something I can predict.
Cadillac Fuel-Cell Electric Hybrid
GM has unveiled this fuel cell powered hybrid prototype Cadillac. It uses the same drive train architecture as the Chevy Volt. I like the use of wheel motors to provide all wheel drive. If GM can get some of the advanced hybrid technology to market at a competitive cost and in numbers, the next decade could be very good for the General.
Solar Power at Nellis AFB
The claimed largest photovoltaic solar system has gone into operation at Nellis Air Force Base, on the northern edge of Las Vegas, NV. The 14 megawatt system will provide 25% of the base’s power requirements.
I put up these pictures because I spent 3 great years flying F-16s out of Nellis back in the mid 80’s. Things were a lot different then. In the squadron we had a Wang word processor the size of a washing machine. Flight planning was done by hand and there was no GPS. The F-16 did, though have some pretty slick bomb dropping and navigation technology, at least for that era. So without any further ado, here are some pictures courtesy of cleantech.com 
Changing the purpose of my Watchlist page
I had put up a Watch List page on this blog to track some ETF’s and indexes to look for market trends and turns. I have not done much with it or kept it up to date, so I decided to change the focus of this page.
As I read about the market and stocks certain stocks will catch my eye and I will make a note to get back to it later and do some more research at a later date. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t! I decided to make a listing of these stocks on the Watch List here so they enter may thought process more often and anyone else can make a comment.
The comments of this page will be available (I hope!). If you have a comment on a stock listed there feel free to state your opinion. Thanks.
-
Amazon gift card link
Investing Bestsellers
Subscriptions
