I tried to think of a better title - I really did. It's bad now, but in a couple years I'm going to say, "A portmanteau *and* that word we no longer use, spluh". But, like, that's what it was. Memorial Day weekend and then the memening of GME, AMC, and BB. There's no other way to describe it. I'm sorry but I will not apologize.

Anyway, we headed up to Poway to check out the new Cooley backyard and enjoy some burgers.


Naturally, there were some MAGAs on the street corner. I'd think any other day would be more appropriate for a political rally, but I can't blame them for wanting to be outside. Now bring on the June gloom!


I added steel cables for shear support. Having suffered through cutting the cable with bolt cutters for many years, I finally got the tool made for the job. It's terrible. I'll have to invest in whatever the commercial version is rather than the hand tool that was the only option at HD.


The strong tie bases are great for eye bolts. I didn't originally plan for this (instead getting regular bolts), but the changeout wasn't much work.


After ten years of sun, rain, and pool-adjacency, my galv deck post bases show no signs of corrosion. Still, some of the wood joining brackets are not galv so I hit them all with spray paint. My understanding is that spray paint's achilles heel is abrasion, and that shouldn't be much of an issue here.

To go one step further, I used dry teflon tool spray that is supposed to be good against corrosion. It might not endure UV exposure and rain for an extended period of time but is fairly cheap and easy to reapply - it's clear so there's no masking or cleanup.

Walls

For the walls I settled on cleaning the county out of 1x4s, at no small cost to myself.

LP SmartSide fascia installation information highlighting common max spacing.

After researching a number of different products I found that most horizontal fencing/siding systems are solid (e.g. shiplap), require support every 24", or both. This left just redwood 1x4s or 1x6s that could span the 8' with a little help at the halfway mark.

Roof

For the veranda top I went with the standard 2x2 wood beams you see on most such structures. I had a few other ideas...


I grabbed some half-round and hollow square acrylic pieces from a local plastics supply. They actually look pretty neat and might handle looking grimy okay. Acrylic was in budget but I wasn't sure the UV properties would work out. I didn't follow up on looking into polycarbonate equivalents.


I also considered a stained glass look with gaps between rectangular tiles.


Another way to go would have been 1x4s or similar affixed at a 45ish degree angle.


Unfortunately there was no hardware for this. The closest brackets I found were not for sitting atop a 2x6. The angle could be accomplished by cutting 2x2s into triangles, but it wouldn't look nearly as clean as an almost-flush metal bracket.


Since suffering the embarrassment of installing a new garbage disposal without punching out the dishwasher punch-out tab, I've gone half-Ahab on a new issue. The rinse cycle doesn't completely drain and it shows some sort of prehistoric error code wherein the Favorite Cycle Set button flashes and other buttons don't work. Kenmore 66515972990 dishwasher, to be specific, though I guess it's just a rebranded Whirlpool.

YouTube was semi-helpful, though it seems like every dishwasher is completely unique and has no exact twin anywhere in the world.


To get to the filter/drain area required removing the impeller. This is the standard screw-attached-to-spinny thing situation where you need to grab the thing that spins and unscrew the screw. In this case, it was a very, very seized screw and a soft plastic impeller.

The replacement didn't go to badly. I then inspected the electronics to find nothing visibly amiss. Fingers crossed.


GME is back in the high 200s and holding strong. Or "HODLing strong" as the kids say.


Meanwhile, after months on life support, AMC (a fringe meme stock from January) went on a moon mission to $65 in the span of a couple days. If it's anything like GME, this is because I sold covered calls on my 300 shares, going with longer expirations to make them worth the button press.


Perhaps this is a new era of raising capital - pander to retail. I'm told AMC also donated to the Fossey Gorilla Fund.

I guess the other strategy is to shoot the moon with short interest.


The remaining JV meme stonks are BlackBerry and Nokia.

Seeking laughs

I still use CNBC for their quotes/charts and couldn't not check out their clickbait link to a Seeking Alpha article. I was pleasantly rewarded.

Some quotes from AMC: Hedge Fund 1-0 Reddit Army (emphases mine)...

Seeking Alpha

AMC issued 8,500,000 shares for $230,500,000 to an investment firm named Mudrick Capital Management, LP. AMC said that it will use the proceeds from the capital raise for the "pursuit of value creating acquisitions of theater assets and leases, as well as investments to enhance the consumer appeal of its theaters".

Makes sense so far. Pretty sure stocks are ways for companies to raise money for business ventures. AMC needs this as much as anyone else. The new offering should surprise no one, GME did it.

Seeking Alpha

However, the price reaction literally makes no sense given that the firm announced a capital raise, which increases the number of shares. As more shares are issued, the firms EPS is poised to decline as earnings are distributed over a larger amount of outstanding shares. The reaction to a capital raise is typically for the share price to fall, not to increase.

The dumb version of 'literally' can't have made its way into mainstream journalism. Is this a blog post? Anyway, weird to be discussing fundamentals in a post about a meme stock. Also weird to describe stock dilution first in EPS terms when you can just point to the very approachable concept of supply. Or maybe that was a deliberate choice because it would lead the reader to think about that other economic force that's often mentioned with supply.

Seeking Alpha

Mudrick Capital Management is said to have already exited its position in AMC after making a quick 20% on Tuesday... the whole thing was really just a quick flip as the investment firm offloaded overpriced shares to retail investors...

Kind of a sweet deal for Mudrick. Checkmate, Redditors.

Seeking Alpha

The risk here is immeasurable because neither the price action nor the valuation makes any sense for AMC. AMC's price should have gone down yesterday, not up because a capital raise is dilutive... but nothing makes sense anymore when it comes to AMC. AMC is trading independently of its business numbers and growth prospects and the risk of losing everything in this "investment" is extremely high.

This is gone from "I'm continuing to be surprised by one of the things my article is predicated on" to sounding suspiciously like the concern trolling we saw in January from institutional investors making public appearances.

Seeking Alpha

A hedge fund just had a big victory and nobody seems to notice or care.

:'(

Seeking Alpha

You literally had a hedge fund flipping its stake in AMC to the Reddit army at a massively overpriced valuation and explicitly calling AMC "overvalued." It can't get any more brazen than this. Please be careful.

Another dumb 'literally' and breaking the fourth wall at the very end? Is Seeking Alpha like a financial Geocities or something? I'm not super familiar with the site but its name is thrown around often enough.

It's a lot of words to say "meme stock is memeing, if this is unfamiliar, stay away and read about GME".

Anyway, the peanut gallery gave me a giggle:

Commenter	Comment
Jstic	After today, it looks to me like Mudrick made a multi million dollar mistake. The amount of money they left on the table is probably getting some people fired.
mattgrim81	Not sure why you posted this today after the stock soared 100% extremely bad timing ??
Mark Roussin	Well this was unfortunate timing
Christopher Brady Morris	This aged well.
RetailinvestFTW	Mudrick capital lost over 300 million in potential gains if it had just held 1 single trading day
MIKEC100	People seem to be getting a little nervous here
Checkthenumbers	Time to update the scoreboard. Halftime score: Team Hedge Fund 1 Team Reddit 0 Final score: Team Hedge Fund 1 Team Reddit 62.55

Options trading via The Brocratic Method

A recap of the recent AMC saga, some info about selling options, and other commentary:

		I optioned off my 100 [AMC] shares at 27.		Kevin
		Got 500 bucks so I am still ahead even if this executes. At least for the time being.
		Chris do you have a minimum you sell options at? On the one hand I feel like I have these shares doing nothing so even 50 bucks is something. On the other hand it's work.
Chris	Yeah that ITM call win-win is so nice.
	My price floor is augmented by the slight tingling sensation in my loins so it's $20.
	But I try to shoot for maybe 0.8% or more on the weekly return.
	Plus it's only a weekly exercise. And you can always go longer-expiration or more contracts.
	If it's say $20 it's probably a $10-30 stonk, so you could have a 500 share position.
	That's where I was lazy for a bit and just put my 50k active trading money into NVDA. One contract per week.
		So you stick to 1- or 2-week contracts?		Kevin
	Yeah I do 1-2 weeks to limit my exposure if there's a rug pull.
	And cause I like gambling.
	Mostly.
		Oh man NVDAs got some sweet options.
Chris	Haha look at COIN and GME :D
	I have 2022 and 2023 contracts for NOK and ERIC and some fall ones as hedges (US dollar inverse, volatility, etc).
		Man $3,000 contracts for GME. Only need to pony up 24k to get started on that.
	Yeppppp, could do a single day thing and limit your exposure.
	Open today close tomorrow and take 1k.
	Or open Thursday and go til expiration.
		Wait how do I close? I can't back out of my current contract, I would basically just need to buy another 100 shares.		Kevin
	Open and close is just a way to address the fact that you can either do a buy-sell or a sell-buy
	So if I sold a put on COIN today for $200, I could wait for it to expire/assign. Or I could close it buy buying the same put for (hopefully) less tomorrow. I won't make the full $200, but it'll let me exit the position with profit and free up the cash I used to secure the put.
	Or say you sell a call on your NVDA. You bought at $600 and sell a $610 call. If the price moves to $590, you could buy that call back for cheeeaaaap cause it's less likely to expire in the money *and* theta (time decay) has also devalued it.
		Ohhh interesting. So really you could just play the options market as things go up and down as well. But I assume the options pricing is highly correlated with the price of the stock itself.
Chris	Yes and yes. Basically the movement of the underlier (stock/equity) determines the likelihood that the contract will expire in the money.
	The percent chance of being ITM is called delta and your brokerage lists it though I don't know how they decide it's legit.
	So yeah, you can trade options like daytrading equities, except there's more volatility.
	For us, it's about closing a position that's made (or lost) *enough* money to justify taking lower gains in exchange for eliminating risk. Colloquially, paper handing it.
	Riding it til expiration would called diamond handing it.
		Selling options on your long stonks is cutting off your trip to the moon.		Zac
		It's true except when they don't moon and just sit and do nothing.		Kevin
		AMC is not a "sit and do nothing" stonk.		Zac
		It's a meme stonk.
		It's either going to the moon or going to zero.
		Tell that to AMC for the last four months.		Kevin
		I mean I keep telling myself I probably would have just sold it anyway by now.
		AMC trading has been halted.
		That's how you know you have reached true meme status.

Scotty and Sophie sent Lil' Dani some appropriately-chosen toys - a scotty dog and Sophie the giraffe.


The mobile is pretty good entertainment, hopefully the mural will soon be contrasty enough to warrant attention.



PUBG renovated Miramar, adding an ATV and anti-materiel rifle. The graphical model updates aren't bad, but like the Sanhok update somebody thought it'd be a good idea to crank saturation up to the max. It's painful on the eyes.



I'm older now than I was before. In celebration, Jes made me some one-off t-rex slippers to supplement/replace my mass market t-rex slippers that weren't very well made.

We impose order on the chaos of organic life. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it.

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