Long time no talk

 It's been a long time since I posted anything on here.  Does anyone still read blogs?  2020 has been a dumpster fire of a year. 

Chevy Volt...the Unsung Hero of the GM Stable

GM EV1

Bob Lutz is nothing if not sure of himself.  When GM created the EV1 it was done as a large scale experiment.  The results of that experiment was that he decided the time was not right for a large scale deployment of commercial EVs.  The EV1 was well received but on the whole, it wasn't really a viable transportation option unless a number of other pieces fell into place - primarily charging infrastructure and battery power density.  He pulled the plug on the experiment, crushed all but a handful of EV1s and let the markets ferment for a bit.  Tesla, through cunning, funding, and sheer force of will, pushed EVs into the mainstream. 

Tesla Roadster

Bob Lutz w/ Chevy Volt Prototype

     Lutz recognized the advantages offered by EVs and how the market conditions had changed by then, largely because of Tesla.  He gave the greenlight to the development of a plug-in hybrid that would eliminate the biggest complaint with most EVs...range.  Eventually that vehicle was unveiled as the Chevy Volt.

Chevy Volt

The vehicle would travel about 35 miles on electric battery power exclusively.  When that was exhausted an on-board gasoline fueled generator would fire up and allow the vehicle to continue on for a few hundred more miles just as it's conventional Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) counterparts do.  The 35 mile electric only range means that the vast majority of the miles that the car travels in its life will not produce any emissions. Most drivers in the US travel 38 miles/day or less.  The Volt was the stepping stone that moved people over. 
     GM grossly over engineered the vehicle. They recognized that the Lithium Polymer battery was a weak spot in the design because there wasn't much known yet about how the large batteries behaved or how long they'd last.  GM tested the batteries extensively and found that extreme swings in temperature and the number of full charge/discharge cycles were among the most significant factors affecting battery performance and longevity.  To get around this limitations, engineers gave the Volt about 20-30% more battery than it actually needed.  This meant that it would never fully charge/discharge.  The battery would never need to work very hard.  To keep it at a stable temperature, a liquid cooling system was used to regulate the temperature.  All rechargeable batteries will degrade eventually.  As the battery degrades, the controls in the Volt make more of the battery's capacity available to ensure that the user doesn't experience loss of capacity.  As of 8/16, GM had zero reported cases of battery replacement due to loss of general capacity.  There have been a few replaced due to component failures, but none that have suffered general capacity failure.  The Volt has a small but extremely loyal, and satisfied, user base.  The Volt has been ranked high or highest in customer satisfaction since its introduction, crash test ratings have similarly been among the best.  Fuel economy obviously scores well.  Reliability is the one that surprised me.  For all the high-tech stuff in the Volt it has proven to be a surprisingly reliable car.  Sure it's had a few quirks to work out, but this is new technology in uncharted waters, some bumps are to be expected. 
     So why doesn't everyone own a Volt!?!?!  The Volt commanded a high price initially at $40k+ and had the misfortune of being released as GM was declaring bankruptcy from the largest financial collapse since the Great Depression.  Bob Lutz was shown the door as part of GMs restructuring and the bailout by the US federal government.  The Volt was his "swan song".  The Volt received a flurry of publicity initially with high-profile celebrities making Volt purchases.  The $40k price tag was a significant hurdle.  The pluses outweighed the cons for the Volt though, and it sold reasonably well.  Over time, the price dropped until it could be purchased for about $30k.  Better still, the federal government created an income tax credit for purchasers of EVs based on EV range.  The Volt is eligible for the full credit of $7500 making the price drop into the low to mid $20k range.  Eventually, when enough are sold, the credit will go away and the Volt's price will return to the $30k range.  It is still the best selling plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV).  In 2016 a second generation Volt was released that provided a more powerful motor, more electric range and some additional features added to improve the Volt's standing. All of this adds up to a fantastic car, at a reasonable price that no one seems to know about.  Those who do know about it generally love it and won't shut up about it.  It's only real competition is from the Prius Prime plugin. 

Prius Prime PHEV

The Prius has half the range of the Volt on battery but better gas mileage afterward.  Having driven a Prius, I can confirm that the Volt feels like a more significant vehicle.  The Prius feels like a stripped down shell of a car.  The Volt feels luxurious in comparison. 

Juggling Benjamins

Because of various transitions and the sale of my employer to a new owner, my 401k and HSA funds have been transferred a combined 8 times from one account to another in the last 6 months.  That means that neither my 401k or my HSA investments have accrued any increases in value for most of the last 6 months, and they've largely been in limbo between different account managers as the transfers were being completed.  It is very frustrating and nervewracking to have large sums of money literally disappear with no trace and have no visibility on it for days or weeks at a time.  I think things are starting to settle down, but I still have about $20,000 that's in limbo.

Guns, Guns, and More Guns

About 5 years ago I was sitting in a restaurant with a friend when the place was robbed by an armed robber.  I think he got away with something like $85 from the till.  Fortunately for me, he didn't look my way.  I suddenly felt very helpless and defenseless.  It was a strange feeling.  I'm not exactly a towering giant of masculine force, but I've never been left feeling defenseless.  For some reason, this experience really set off a chain reaction in my brain.  I'd always had guns.  I grew up in PA.  They give you a Terrible Towel and a .30-06 at the border when you move there for crying out loud.  I passed the hunter safety course at age 12 and went out hunting with my dad a few times, but I never really felt compelled to do much hunting.  It just wasn't for me.  I did enjoy shooting the rifle and shotgun though.  That was always fun.  The deer rifle was expensive to shoot though. I thought about getting my Washington hunting license, but that involved a big complicated process of online courses and field training.  I just wanted to shoot things. So I looked at some guns at a store and learned a bit, and during this time, Washington State passed some very draconian gun control laws.  (I'm not a gun nut, but the law, I-594, can't be enforced, has no way to ensure compliance, and really does nothing to prevent gun crimes.)  I felt if I wanted to get into guns, now was the time, or I'd need to find another way to scratch this itch.  While researching guns I found videos on YouTube from Ted's Holdover.  I discovered that 'BB' guns had grown up since I was a boy.  No longer was the Daisy Red Rider BB Gun the pinnacle of air powered weaponry.  There were now .50cal airguns pushing, massive amounts of lead down range with enough force to take down MASSIVE game animals.  Elk, wild boar, bear, FREAKIN' BEARS!!!  The more I watched the more interested I became.  Here was an option that I hadn't considered.  I could shoot a gun for which there was no deafening 'BANG', there were no legal restrictions, and the projectiles wouldn't send me to debtors prison.  I started researching. 

Umarex PX4 Storm

I started out buying a knock-off Beretta PX4 CO2 pistol.  It's really fun to shoot, but the CO2 powerlets are expensive.  I kept reading about guys shooting PCP rifles and I had no idea what that was, well, aside from a drug that gave people superhuman strengths...I learned that PCP rifles are Pre-charged Pneumatic air guns.  They have a reservoir on-board that stores a charge of compressed air allowing a number of shots from each charge without having to re-pump or prime the reservoir.  It seemed to be a pretty good system.  The guns had a HUGE range in prices, features, calibers, performance...where to begin with learning?  I read, watched videos, read some more, watched some more videos and eventually arrived at a few potential options.  The Benjamin Marauder by Crosman was simple, reliable, and common.  It was the Toyota Camry or Ford Taurus of the PCP gun world.  No frills, but it got the job done.  The other option I looked at was the Hatsan AT-44.  That one looked like a good option on paper, but it had little or no history at the time, so I went with the Marauder.  

But man, even this is still really expensive...$650 for the gun, $100 for the scope, $200 for the pump...$50 for the case...$15 for ammo... so I waited...and waited and watched, and waited...finally I found an angle to get all the pieces I'd need at a reasonable price.  I've had so much fun shooting this gun.  For $15 I can shoot 250-300 rounds.  I eventually purchased a used surplus SCBA tank from eBay and built my own filling station for the gun, so no more pumping for me.  I also learned that my PA Hunter Training certification from 1987 was portable and valid in WA! I got my small game license and I'm in business.  I read through the regulations and learned that I can't take any game with an airgun in Washington...Grrrr!  OK, so now I need a small caliber rifle.  I'm not ready to hunt deer yet.  I start shopping around looking at .22 caliber rifles.  I finally find what I'm looking for at Bi-Mart: a Savage Model 64 .22.

Savage Model 64 .22LR

It's compact, accurate, semi-auto and FUN to shoot. Within two weeks of buying it, I've burned through about 300rounds! I had to purchase gun locks, a gun cabinet, rifle cleaning equipment, scopes, cases...man this is expensive.  But fun.

The Stock Market is Baffling

I posted before about Genspera (GNSZ).  I think that it is a really interesting company with a compelling product.  Today (9/9/15) Genspera announced that their Phase II trials of their lead candidate drug shows promising results against not only liver cancer, but also brain cancer and solid mass cancerous tumors in general.  You'd think that would be a positive bit of news, right?  Apparently not, as the stock nosedived 25% in short order after the announcement.  Baffling.

Genspera (GNSZ)

I am really excited about this stock, and this company.  I first read about them years ago in an article at Gizmodo.com I believe.  The approach that they were taking seemed radically different to what other researchers were working on.  They've created a drug that is completely toxic, derived from a plant that is known to kill anything that eats it, but it can travel through the body harmlessly until it bumps into a specific protein which only forms on the surface of cancerous tumors.  In other words, it's like a smart bomb.  It travels through the veins and detonates at precisely the correct moment and location to cause maximum damage to the target and minimize collateral damage.  They just wrapped Stage II trails with very promising results and are about to begin Stage III trials.  It's a dirt cheap stock currently.  If Stage III trials go well, I'd imagine it can only go up.  I'm excited for the concept, I'm excited for the results, and I'm excited for the potential.  If I can get rich off of it in the process....all the better.



Press Release:

SAN ANTONIO, Jan. 16, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- GenSpera Inc. (OTCQB: GNSZ) today announced the encouraging results of a Phase II study of mipsagargin (G-202), an investigational agent for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The results will be presented today (12:00 to 2:00 p.m. PST, Abstract #301) in a poster presentation at the 2015 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium in San Francisco, California. 

The Phase II results demonstrated that mipsagargin appears to be effective and is well-tolerated by HCC patients. Mipsagargin targets the enzyme prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA), which is highly expressed in tumor vasculature and prostate cancer cells. The Phase II study results (n=25) demonstrate that the prodrug effectively stabilizes progression of HCC by reducing blood flow within tumors while not affecting blood flow within normal tissues. 

"We are very encouraged with the positive results from this Phase II trial that demonstrate the tolerability and show indications of effectiveness of mipsagargin in advanced liver cancer patients," said Craig Dionne, PhD, chief executive officer at GenSpera. "Mipsagargin is a first-in-class agent with a novel mechanism of action that is unlike any other drug being tested in patients with advanced liver cancer. Based on the results of this study, we intend to move forward with a large, global Phase III trial."

Mipsagargin's targeted approach differs from other vascular targeting agents by destroying established tumor vasculature rather than slowing the growth of new tumor blood vessels. The PSMA-targeting agent is designed to minimize side effects commonly observed with other therapies, while maximizing activity against tumors. 

"These results demonstrate the potential that mipsagargin has to treat one of the world's deadliest cancers," said Devalingam Mahalingam, MD, PhD, an oncologist at the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and principal investigator of the study. "In addition to observing prolonged disease stabilization in some patients, we noted anecdotal evidence that patients had improved performance status with much less fatigue and side effects associated with other anti-cancer therapeutics."

With Phase II complete, GenSpera is designing a large, international Phase III study which will further define the anti-tumor potential of mipsagargin in liver cancer patients. More information on mipsagargin (G-202) can be found at www.genspera.com.

Hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common form of cancer that originates in the liver. In the United States, more than 33,000 new cases will be diagnosed in 2015. Globally, liver cancer is a primary public health issue with more than 700,000 people diagnosed and more than 600,000 deaths annually. It is the most common type of cancer in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. A liver cancer diagnosis is often subsequent to other liver disease, making treatment of a highly compromised patient population particularly challenging.

Data Establishes Foundation for Continued InvestigationThe Phase II study (Abstract #301) of mipsagargin was a multi-site, single arm study designed to assess time to progression and response rate to treatment. The study measured disease progression in 25 patients with advanced-stage liver disease and poor liver reserves who had failed first line treatment with sorafenib. Patients were administered episodic dosing of mipsagargin on the first three days of each treatment cycle. Study participants experienced a median time to progression of 4.2 months, nearly twice the time demonstrated in prior studies with placebo or ineffective agents. Thirty-five percent of patients received 5 or more cycles of treatment with an average time on study of 7.1 months.  Additionally, mipsagargin demonstrated decreased blood flow in liver tumors as measured by DCE-MRI.

About GenSperaGenSpera Inc. is a San Antonio-based biotech company that unlocks conventional thinking to conceive, design, and develop cancer therapies. GenSpera's technology platform combines a powerful, plant-derived cytotoxin (thapsigargin) with a patented prodrug delivery system that provides for the targeted release of drug candidates within tumors. GenSpera's lead drug candidate, mipsagargin, was granted Orphan Drug designation by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2013 for evaluation in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer).

Being Alone

Being alone by yourself is so much better than being alone together with someone else. In the first situation you're physically isolated, while in the second you're actively ignored. The first situation is lonely. The second is painful. 

Where's the Inflation?

I keep reading about economists predicting out of control inflation in the US.  They've been predicting it for 4-5 years now.  Mathematically, they have reason for concern.  To stem the bleeding of the 2008 financial collapse, the US government "printed" enormous sums of money.  Ordinarily, that would result in out of control inflation. Except it is now 6 years later and it still hasn't happened.  Why?  The government didn't actually print anything.  They made a few computer keystrokes and created and transferred money that didn't exist before .  They did this to balance the books of over-leveraged under-capitalized companies.  This new money never actually went into circulation.  As of yet, it hasn't touched the hands of the average American.  Instead, it went into the coffers of corporations and the fantastically wealthy.  For them (the 1% folks), it didn't really change anything.  When you have a net worth of Billions of dollars, a few hundred million here and there doesn't really change anything.  They weren't forced to sell a home, or a fleet of expensive cars.  That money was fictitious for all intents and purposes.  Eventually, that money will leak into the public stream and it will cause problems though.  Until then, the poor are still poor, the rich are richer, and everyone in between is still in between.

2 Days in the Valley

I spent 2 days alone with Ender this weekend.  It was bitter cold one day, and then we had 12" of snow the next.  On the first day it was too cold to leave the house except to run to the car.  On the second day we almost couldn't leave the house.  We managed to make it to the movie theater two days in a row and watched Frozen on Saturday and The Lego Movie on Sunday.  Frozen was good, but it could have been great if they'd just left out the song and dance numbers.  The Lego Movie was just plain fantastic.  I strongly recommend it.  We spent almost all of the rest of our time making things with Legos.

I'm feeling a bit isolated recently.  I don't really get out much and I don't really have any close friends to do much of anything with.  Everything that I want to do seems to be scheduled specifically to coincide with every single thing that my wife has scheduled for several months in advance.  Hockey on Monday?  Wife has a poetry group.  Hockey on Thursday?  Wife has a book club.  Hockey on Sunday?  Wife has weekend away / some writing workshop / some random thing that has her out of town until just after I need to leave to get to hockey on time.  Beer and Science Night?  There's always something that keeps me from going.  It's getting really frustrating.

Hard About! Hoist the main sail!

Every once in a while I get a tingly feeling when I read about a company. The tingly feeling is usually accompanied by a desire to purchase stock in said company because some type of change of monumental scale is afoot. I'm getting that feeling about Yahoo. I feel that they finally have someone in charge after nearly a DECADE of foundering and flailing about in vain. It seems that they have a direction. Their horrible management of the last 10 years has left them no choice in their direction. They could have been a force to be reckoned with, but they were like a sledge hammer with a finite number of swings available to them. The swings were all spent in fear and desperation instead of focused on a single goal. They gave away much of their talent when they let Microsoft take over their search operations. I've said it before and I'll say it again. "Agreeing to work with Microsoft is like agreeing to a dinner date with Hanibal Lechter. You might as well role in spices and jump in the oven." Yahoo isn't dead yet though. They have extensive global operations...operations where they're actually doing their own search. It will take them a while and it will involve re-inventing the company yet again, but they might pull out of nosedive and become a respectable company yet again.

A 'HelpDesk' is a resource to turn to for help. It is not a 'Do-It-For-Me' resource. I think that if I could get that point across to more people my desire to kill myself daily would diminish dramatically.

I was discussing finances with some people last night and we talked about how different people reacted to the recession. Some people sold everything and hoarded their cash in low-interest investments. My personal feeling was that the stock market was on sale. All of it. I increased my retirement savings by about 50% in 2008. I figured so long as I have a job and I don't have an immediate need for this money I'd better make use of this once in a lifetime opportunity. I looked at my standard IRA returns a few days ago and I saw just how dramatic the swings in the market were in 2008:

Personal rate of return 01/31/2012
1 year : 3.3%
3 years : 19.8%
5 years : 2.5%

That doesn't mean that I made a fortune in 2009, but rather that I lost a fortune in 2008 and things recovered in 2009-2011...and then some. But in addition to that, I maxed out my IRA contributions, started a ROTH IRA, and made some large (for me) investments in individual stocks while things were down. I bought GE, C, BAC, USB, and F all at incredible discounts. GE is now almost 100% above where I bought it at. C continued to tank and is still in negative territory, but I'm confident that it will recover eventually and earn a profit for me. F is doing well. BAC was doing well, then tanked. I don't know when or if that will recover, but if it does I should do pretty well there too.

I remember a time not that long ago, maybe 3-5 years ago, when I liked my job and looked forward to going in. Now I feel like it is death by a thousand paper cuts. In the last 3 years my responsibilities have tripled, my pay has been flat, and I've lost vacation time. My benefits of been reduced. When I do take a vacation, I'm still on-call. When I wake in the morning I can feel my psychosomatic gland whipping up a flu, sore throat, stomach ache, head ache, etc in an effort to convince me to call in sick. I used to tell myself "be thankful, you still have a job". Now I'm starting to think that my job is killing me. We shouldn't live to work. We should work to live. My job is not enhancing my life in any way. It is interfering with my life and my health. The worst bit though is that I feel trapped, helpless and powerless. I can not just look in the paper and get another job. They don't exist. So on I go a little closer to giving up everyday. Damned Protestant Work Ethic. Mazlow would use me as an example. At 1 day shy of 36 I'm clinging tenaciously to the first stage of Mazlow's Hierarchy and I'm pretty sure that my job is trying to take that from me too.

5 weeks of a sick child has left me exhausted. Ender went through a long string of symptoms and is only now starting to act normal again. He has spent about 1/6 of his short life with a cold. Poor guy. I hope that he rebounds quickly.

This is a long shot, but it might be time to invest in Palm. They've essentially taken the brains from Apple and they are re-inventing the company. The stock price is fairly reasonable, and I suspect that they are going to see a bit of a resurgence against all odds...just like Apple in the late 90s. Jon Rubenstein is the current 'top dog' at Palm. Jon was chief of hardware engineering at Apple and helped to conceive and create the iPod. Fred Anderson is on the board of Palm and Elevation Partners and he was the director of Finance for Apple. Avie Tevanian just joined the board of Elevation Partners, a venture capital firm that is a major investor in Palm. Avie Tevanian was the lead developer of the NeXT OS that later became OS X when Apple purchased NeXT. He worked as the head software developer at Apple until 2006. Elevation Partners was co-founded by Fred Anderson (see above) and Bono (of U2). Much of the staff of Palm and Elevation Partners seems to be ex-Apple employees and seems to be a ring of brains around Palm that aren't likely to allow them to fail. It just seems like too many planets and stars are lining up to ignore.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10433198-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
http://www.elevation.com/EP_port.asp
http://www.elevation.com/EP_IT.asp?id=112
http://investor.palm.com/committees.cfm

I do find it to be interesting that U2 has shilled for both Apple and RIM (Blackberry), but not Palm, despite the fact that Bono is a major shareholder of Palm through Elevation Partners.

When I wake up in the morning and I hear Ender crying or whining I'm a bit annoyed that I'm now completely responsible for him until my wife wakes up. I credit being groggy with sleep for this emotion because it is out of character for me. Once I walk into his room a miraculous transformation occurs. He immediately stops fussing and smiles the most incredible smile at me. Suddenly I feel privileged to be responsible for him. I'm now awake, happy, and ready to start my day.

Ender is just a few days over 4 months old. As he stared up at me while sucking down yet another bottle this morning I thought 'this is probably as close to being a god as I'll ever come'. At the same time I felt utterly insignificant. I had helped to create a new life--something that has been aptly referred to as the 'Miracle of Life'-- yet I am well aware that this "miracle" has occurred at least 7-10 billion times in the history of the world. That makes it hardly a rare occurrence but it doesn't make it any less a miracle somehow.

In the book 'The Age of Intelligent Machines' Ray Kurzweil argues that humans build upon their technological developments and this causes the technological developments to increase in frequency. He argues that within my lifetime computers will exist that exceed the storage capacity of the human brain and which will also exceed the computational power of the human brain. That doesn't mean that a smart machine is anywhere on the horizon in my opinion (though Ray Kurzweil disagrees). Ender was born as an essentially unfinished fetus with a brain that was a blank slate. For three months he finished developing while outside the womb and NOW he is starting to become a human. I see the scientific process at work in his brain before he even knows what science is. Observe, create a theory, experiment, review, integrate results into next experiment, form new theory, repeat. He is creating a framework from which to hang his personality on. He is learning how to learn. Think about that for a few seconds. It is a chicken/egg conundrum yet he doesn't let that bother him in the least. Simple tasks such as watching my wife drink from a glass are revelations to him. From that single observation he is learning about fluid dynamics, gravity, muscle control, biology, leverage and who-knows-what-else. It is really amazing to see how a human brain learns how to learn. When a computer finally learns how to learn, beware -- Terminator 4(5?) can't be far off in the future.

Today we leave for Seattle on the first leg of our trip back to Pittsburgh. We're staying overnight with a friend who lives very close to SeaTac. Then we leave in the morning for Pittsburgh. It is the first time we're travelling with the little man. We will be just as confused by the experience as he will be, maybe more so. There are different rules for the FAA, airline, TSA, and the 'unspoken' rules for the random TSA inspectors. I'm sure that at some point someone will make us get rid of something, but we don't know what, so we're trying to plan for every contingency to guarantee that we have diapers and formula no matter what they ask us to leave behind. We have to arrange to have car seats available everywhere. At least this will be the first flight where the screaming inconsolable child that everyone curses will be MINE! Mwah ha ha ha ha!

Last night my wife and my in-laws and I went to see Bill Cosby performing live at Central Washington University for their homecoming. I wasn't really sure what to expect. He delivered an hour and a half long monologue about his experience with getting his daughter through high school and college. It was an interesting experience. I didn't expect 1 long topic. He really managed to drive home the point of view of a parent. His speech was clearly targeted at the audience (college students and their parents) but also managed to reach any parent with a child in college, or graduated from college. What was interesting to me is that my child is 3 months old and I already was able to relate to his words about a parent's love being unconditional. I only have unconditional love for a handful of people in this world, and my son has earned it within a short 3 months. To be honest it happened in only a few seconds after he was born.

Ender has grown quite a bit. On his last visit to the doctor they told him he was in the 99th percentile for height, but because of his height, he was in the 45th percentile for weight. He looks like a 2 year old with a baby's head. It is a bit awkward looking honestly. Still unbearably cute though. He is a happy kid who loves to smile and giggle. He graduated to his crib a few weeks ago because he was simply too big for the bassinet. We're getting ready for a week long trip back to Pittsburgh and that is a daunting task with a 3 month old child. I guess that we'll just have to wing it. The TSA and the airlines have so many rules for traveling with a child.