Archive for January, 2010

Look at Intel Go!

January 19th, 2010

Intel beats profit estimates and leads stock exchange back to the good old days

Intel’s fourth-quarter results roared past Wall Street forecasts and it gave a bullish margin outlook on higher prices and firm demand for server chips, reinforcing hopes for a strong recovery in technology. Intel said on Thursday that its gross profit margin in the fourth quarter rose to a record 65 percent. Other technology stocks rallied after-hours on the news. Intel chip rival AMD gained 1,7 percent and Microsoft climbed nearly one percent. Japan’s Nikkei average hit a 15-month high, lifted by tech shares such as chip equipment supplier Advantest.

2010 is only 20 days old
Analysts are already predicting a return of corporate spending in the second half of 2010 that would lift the tech sector out of its worst downturn in decades. Some say new spending has already begun. “They’re giving us reassurances that the PC sector remains intact and more importantly, that we’re seeing improvements in the economy and that we’re probably well on our way to recovery.” Despite the blowout quarter, shares of the world’s largest microchip maker were up just less than one percent in extended trading, after rallying seven percent in the past two weeks. Chief Intel Executive Paul Otellini told analysts on a conference call that corporate spending should return “modestly in 2010.”

Remember when it started?
I don’t remember the beginnings, but I do remember sitting and looking at the Intel logo with the dropped ‘e’ and wondering what it was all about. I also remember reading a statement by the Intel co-founder, Gordon Moore, when he published his now-famous Moore’ Law which describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware, in which “the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years.” I have to say now that I didn’t have the first idea of what he was talking about.

The fabs
I remember hearing about the costs of building an Intel fab, that’s the name given to the manufacturing plant where the chips are made. People were talking about a thousand dollars a square foot, a figure then unknown in the construction world. I also remember hearing about something called a cleanroom where the chips are actually formed from the silicon. They called these areas Class 1 cleanrooms which means that the air can only contain one particle per cubic meter. The engineering professions rocked on their heels and said, “impossible, even hospital operating theaters aren’t that clean.”

Money and lots of it
But with unlimited money one can do just about anything. The Intel cleanrooms, wherever they are in the world, are Class 1. Whole new construction technologies have been developed to achieve this.

Look at these figures
The Intel net income for 2009 totaled $2,3-billion, or 40 cents a share, in the three months ended December 26, beating expectations for 30 cents according to Thomson Reuters. And it’s all from chips!

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Me, my car and my wife

January 18th, 2010

I hate driving a banged up car
I drive a cherry-red Kia, a hatchback sporty looking model. Despite my age I feel good in the car, almost young again. I look after it, it is always clean and tidy inside and out and I love looking at its nice clean lines from across the street. Don’t misunderstand me, I am not one of those obsessed guys who stands polishing his car every morning and continually inspects it for marks. I take mine to the carwash about twice a month.

Driving
My driving is usually in town with occasional trips to visit children in another town close by, so it hasn’t accumulated a big mileage in the past 4 years, only about 25,000 miles, a mere nothing. It’s actually still pretty new right?

My wife the driver
My wife drives and she too drives mainly in town, in fact I cannot remember her taking the car out of town; most of her driving is up and down to bridge games a couple of times a week.

The accident
And that was when the accident occurred. It seems that she arrived home from a bridge game, navigated the ramp down to the parking level of our apartment building, made the maneuver to reverse park into our parking slot as we always do, and then carefully scraped the side of the car against the concrete column. She scraped the front door on the passenger side, the back door and the part behind the back door, three separate scrapes as the body shop man was careful to point out to me.

The body shop
“A cherry-red car!” said the body shop man. “Who drives a cherry-red car?” He didn’t say it quite like that, but that’s what he meant. “Oh dear, just look at this damage!” He didn’t say it like that either. “Three separate scrapes, including the flattening of this sidestrip. That’s gonna cost you, old man!”
I hate being called old. “How much is it gonna cost me?” I asked.
“Let’s see,” and he transformed himself into a human calculating machine, mumbling figures, multiplying, adding and adding and adding, all in his head.
“Five hundred and sixty dollars plus the tax”
“You added in the tax before,” I said.
“Okay. It’s gonna cost you five hundred and sixty dollars including the tax.”

The other side
He then walked around the other side of the car, the driver’s side. This side of the car is full of little vertical white and gray marks where the adjacent driver has flung his car door open after parking next to me and left his signature all over my car. The body shop man looked at me guiltily and said I can get those out with polish. No charge.

Payment
I have to pay that’s clear. I will not wreck the no-claim bonus on my car insurance over this and there is no one I can claim from – wait, what about the bridge club?

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I Need $1,000 To Have A Painting Valued. Where Do I Get A Cash Advance Loan?

January 15th, 2010

I’m sure that’s an Old Master hanging on my wall.
I’m going to the bank to drum up cash advance loans to call in an art expert to examine that dusty old painting that grandpa left me. I was looking at it the other evening and I’m sure that the signature is ‘van Dingelen’. If it is by the Dutch Master, I may have a fortune hanging on my wall. I read an article in the NYT recently about a van Dingelen that had come up on an auction at Sotheby’s and there had been enthusiastic bidding. The painting had eventually sold for about 300,000 dollars. I use money like that!

It would be a dream
This could be as good as a Lotto win. Can you imagine living with a piece of art that you never even glance at as you pass it a thousand times a day and it suddenly turns out to something of great value? Is it possible that the old painting that’s been hanging on my study wall since grandpa died in 1957 could really be worth great globs of money? The lovable old guy knew exactly what he was doing. He probably bought it from the artist himself back in the early 1900’s when he started making his first money and wanted to help the starving painter. I’m not the only one taking a new look at the things I live with. We all go through life picking up pieces we fancy, or that we think will go well with the curtains, or some of us with an eye to the future. We live with them and most of us probably leave without doing anything about them.

It could be money.
The more I look at the picture, the more I am convinced I should take a loan and call in an art expert. Of course, the painting may turn out to be someone’s third lesson at art school, but who knows? There was a story in the papers last week about a photographer who borrowed large amounts of money and left her photographs as security against the loan. At a time when stock portfolios are yo-yoing and many homes have no equity left to borrow against, an increasing number of art owners are realizing that an Old Master or a prime photograph can bring in much-needed cash when used as collateral.

So why not me?
My situation deteriorates daily. I wouldn’t have the nerve to try and put up some of the paintings that I painted as collateral against the loan. But I have no hesitation about walking from room to room peering at everything that’s hanging on the walls and the pieces on the coffee tables. I am in the market for a pleasant money surprise.
So I will be outside the bank at opening time tomorrow morning and who knows how it will go from there.

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