RobbieG

Sorry. The joke was kind of meant for Lani. He is my brother. Not a US thing either BTW as Hawaii is its own country (thank God for that). But see, everyone learned something about Hawaiian culture accidentally Isn't that awesome? Gotta love RWG. I already learned that they now make white wines without oak in another thread. Now somebody teach me something else here...

- Lanikai lives on an island. A Polynesian one. - Kawela is at the extreme Northern tip of one of those islands. - A shaper is a guy who makes surfboards for a living. - Zippy's is a chain of fast food restaurants in Hawaii. One location is in a shopping center called Koko Marina. - Koko Marina is close (what location isn't?) to many popular surf spots on that island. - Chili and rice is a staple food of island surfers which is served by Zippy's in a convenient family size packed in a plastic tub perfect for travel. - Dawn patrol is a term used to describe surfers who set out for a session when it is still dark because they heard the waves are good. See, now it isn't an inside joke anymore.

That goes to show you how removed from wine I am. I didn't even know that. I gave up on white wine a hundred years ago. Actually, I have been really into Champagne's lately as one of my collegues is a sort of expert and he has been teaching me a lot about them. Good fun.

Don't let him fool you guys. Lani is the best shaper south of Kawela Bay. He also works overnights a Zippy's Koko Marina preparing the chili/rice for da' dawn patrol boyz...

Well I gotta figure when my industry is down 35% or so and I'm up nearly double that YTD, I pretty much would have to set the line at one of every gen PAM in the lineup for starters as a fee for shared knowledge. I was thinking of instituting a watch in liue of cash bonus system with our clients anyway so maybe you can be the alpha dog on that front?

Here's all I know: 1. Nobody can predict market direction. Anyone who says they can just wants to get your money. 2. Small but consistent profits are easy to achieve if you can manage greed and fear. 3. Leverage can turn those small profits into big ones with very manageble risk if you have confidence in your model. Not to be confused with confidence in the individual trades. 4. Succesful long/short technical trading is just like playing blackjack in Vegas. I am a good card counter so most of the good blackjack seats in Vegas are unavailable to me. They won't let me play. There is a reason for that. It is because in the long run I can neutraize the house edge and I figure to win. They don't like that. It doesn't mean however that I will win every session. After all it is a game of chance. Or is it? Yes and no. Math is math and there are small but consistent profits in the long run if you can play long enough to achieve your expectation. In trading the S&P500 every day I can play long enough, but I don't win every day. Far from it. Last year I won 42% of my trades and booked a 72% annual return in my principle asset class. That return un-levered would have been 12%. But I had the confidence to lever at 6:1. That is the dirty secret of trading models. Most don't return much but if the confidence of the math distributing the same every month is high it gives you the confidence to correctly bet more without taking on additional risks. Simple and elegant but it took me 20 years to figure out how to do it in the way that works for me consistently. 5. Quite simply put everyone could do what I do if they had the discipline. It is 100% mechanized. But most can't or won't because of psychology or discipline or both. They just can't sit and lose a lot without thinking they are failing. They also probably don't understand how to manipulate the math to better understand what it is that they do. Most want to react to what they see and I realize that what I see is not rational. The best thing I can do is not try to have an edge and be purposefully unbiased so as to make the game of trading most like a gambling game. That is to say an even money proposition. The closer the numbers are to 50/50, they easier it is to evaluate the management of individual trades so as to achieve the cardinal rule. Win some. Lose some. But always try to win a hair more than you lose...

Owner/principle trader of a small private equity long/short hedge fund. We also have a new business unit which develops automated trading and hedging system software for investment banking and larger fund of funds clients. The goal in the relative short run being to white label enough of my software systems to replace the income from managing client capital, which is lucrative but brutal...

Yeah Hanger One is great. I forgot about that one. Woody, yes, but in a different way than Belvedere which is kind of oaky. It is definitely a flaw in my taste buds not yours. I have many friends who swear by it. I also might add that I don't like many Chardonnays and they tend to be oaky as well so there must be something about oak that doesn't agree with me. In any case, your invention is cool for sure - and yes bruising with gin is more of an issue, but I do taste differences depending on how much vodka has been shaken - and certainly the source of the ice as well. I know bartenders that swear by spring water for high end martinis and others that say mineral water is best believe it or not. I don't know how much I could buy into that but i sure do like drinking pretty much any fine vodka any way it comes within reason! But anyway, I would agree that the over-shaking phenomenom is far more dramitic in gin. Cheers!

I believe everything in the listing is genuine. The watch certainly is and from what can be seen the cards look to be also. Agree with Taka that what ships may be different...

Very creative Omni and I got a good laugh. Although I can't help but wonder what that does to the vodka. I too like shaken 'tini's but it is generally accepted we don't want to shake it too much as it can alter the composition of the spirits. In other words, true connoisseurs take care not to bruise the vodka or gin. But I'm sure of one thing and that is at least you have the coldest Martini's in your neghborhood. As a side note I also have to add that I'm not much of a Belvedere guy. My partner is though. He loves it. I usually stick with Goose which I prefer with olives. I also like Ciroc alot lately, but only with fruit and never with olives in that case. With Belvedere, I always taste this weird woody bite on the finish. He says he doesn't taste that. Funny how our palets are all different. Anyway, congrats on your invention and let me know if you taste a difference in your favorite vodkas if you shake them less. I know I do - even with a shaker if I overdo it by hand. But again, you may not - or even if you do the added coldness is more important. Nothing like cold vodka. Yum...

Oh and almost forgot - don't forget to check out his pens too...

Always nice to see your Explorer BT. Although being a tropical climate guy I'm not one to share in ever wishing for snow - unless I'm on vacation....

Back to the MMD for Wednesday...

Yes, great stuff Shundi. They are not cheap with starting prices approaching a grand, but hey, you only live once right? For me, I just love the fact that in this cheap ass - mechanized - just microwave and serve - Wal Mart world we live in there is still someone out there that spends a year making a f'n letter opener. God bless him. I almost want to just send him another grand without getting anything in return as a way of saying how much I appreciate the last of these dying breeds. One day they will all be gone and that will be a sad, sad day...

Nothing new here - and I seem to be enjoying that lately believe it or not...

As watch guys we all of course tend to appreciate the finer things in life. I also like to give plugs to those who do exceptional work. I have bought a few pieces from him over the years and can't say enough about him. My Father turned me on to him and in fact I just ordered another knife for myself. So for those of you that are unfamiliar, may I present William Henry. Maker of the some of the coolest pocket knives (and pens) you ever saw. Each piece takes at least 8 months and over 800 steps to complete. The pocket knife equivalent to A. Lange & Sohne complications... http://www.williamhenrystudio.com/catalog.html

It does look cool actually. You know President bracelets are a funny thing. So close to an Oyster and yet so far. It is not just the smaller links but also the symmetry that makes them. Just as an objective statement as an aside considering the dress watches for a moment - when you experiment trying on Rolex watches - either your own or even better at an AD, I think most would say the President bracelet is the richest looking of them all. I've always been amazed at how much the President bracelet pops as compared to the Oyster particularly when comparing Day Dates to Datejusts. One would think they would be close to the same and they really aren't. But I wouldn't call it bling necessarily. More like pop or richness. At 36MM they both command a prescence much greater than their size, but the President is the clear winner. Something about the shape of the narrow links I guess.

...and I might add that your ice blue (same as Glacier in Rolex terms to the OP) is quite accurate in color as for some reason the DJ ones seem to be. The DD glacier/ice is much more turquoise looking and lacks the true subtle paleness of the color. Glacier/Ice blue is just a stunning color. It is sort of colorless and colorful at the same time and reacts wonderfully to different light...

I like my Airking with pepperoni and pineapple. Supposedly a real watch made by Rolex scanned from a Japanese magazine...

Any dealer can assemble any case with any bracelet with any dial on either a Swasian or Asian movement for you. If you don't see it on the website just ask them directly and they will do it for you. Although the glacier dial isn't all that accurate color wise. You may want to choose something else that looks better like rhodium which is much more accurate... Here is a rep Datejust with a rhodium dial compared to my gen Datejust with the same. Despite other inaccuracies, the dial color is fine on the rep. You should also be aware that Rolex changes the cases and dials ALOT from serial year to serial year sometimes. So just because your rep watch has flaws to the current year doesn't mean it wasn't accurate a couple of years ago... Rep: Gen:

Debates can get ugly and sometimes it is hard to see the forest through the trees when they get heated. Let's keep in mind that the real issue here is not whether one thinks it is OK to laugh or joke about something or whether they think it funny or not or what the customs are on the internet, which seems to keep being mentioned... There also seems to be this notion sometimes that jokes of this kind are commonplace in all media. It just isn't so. Use Jay Leno if you must compare something to the mainstream. You will never hear him making a joke about being handicapped... Lani's heart is in the right place and he is just trying to point out that maybe we should be considering the subject of the "joke" instead of the "joke" itself more carefully. The fact is none of us would think alot of things funny if they happened to us. But we have to distinguish a guy falling down the stairs from a guy who can't walk down a flight of stairs. One is funny in the sense that physical comedy is funny, one is tragic and there is not one person here who would be laughing if it were him with the disability. We can all choose to be bigger than the norm is the point. Why not be the guy who isn't laughing even though your freinds are? Try and look at it that way instead of some issue of absolute morality being pushed on you. Sure we can and do laugh at things we shouldn't and it is the way of the world - but that doesn't mean that we should. I think Lani is just looking for us to recognize that and to be evolved enough to know the difference...

@swissaddict - GREAT wristshot! UN again today for me...

You scare me brother. Spoken like a true stalker...

Yeah, you guys across the pond have got to give us American pikers a chance to get the best of it for a while, albiet short lived. No doubt my long term view of the EUR/USD cross is still bullish (meaning the dollar hasn't got a chance - too much cheap money sloshing around the universe for too long...)

Since everyone seems to have weighed in on this now, I vote we drop it all and get back to more meaningful discussions like whether I'm the new Jetmid or not and/or whether or not P4GTR is really going to come out of the closet or not. In other words, let's lighten up and put the heavy stuff behind us before it just gets too morbid around here. We all see and here enough of that stuff elsewhere I'm sure - especially in the world as it is today. And even funny stuff aside, the watch talk is shrinking a little which bothers me. Some of the brand forums are hardly touched lately which is sad. There has also been more than enough cross forum stuff and dealer hatred and intra-member feuds and Paypal issues and the like to last a lifetime in the past few months. Let's all make a pact to start more meaningful watch related discussions and kickstart this place with some positive energy for a change. Join with me in saying enough is enough. In honor of that positive energy, look what I did recently. Someone had given me this titanium Skagen quartz watch as a gift that came on a matching Ti bracelet. I of course wouldn't wear a non-mechanical watch being a bit of a purist, so I bought some fun colored gator straps with speed pins for easy changing and gave it to my fiance'. She loves it and it looks great on her...