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I could not resist. You have to watch today’s Wallstrip.

Today at work one of my coworkers asked if I was an owner of a specific company and what I thought about the company. I told him I was, and we talked for quite a while giving our thoughts on its qualities and failures as a stock. While talking to him I was trying to decide whether or not his question was too personal.

Is telling somebody the securities in your portfolio at the same level of invasion of privacy as telling them how much money you make? Or your age? Your shoe size? I have actually been trying to decide if sharing this information was out of my comfort level for quite some time. I guess since I continue to answer these questions means I am ok with it for now. I refuse to answer what my purchase price was or how large of a stake I own though. Where do I draw the line?

These questions are some what hard to answer since I love personal finance and investing oh so much. I would love to sit down and talk out these issues with somebody and learn more about them, their securities, their methods, their successes, and their failures. For now, I guess I must make my decision.

I was also thinking if there was a point where a person should be morally responsible for sharing this information. For example, if one was a Senator or running for Senate (state or federal), would it be advantages to reveal this information publicly? Doing so or not has many implications. I am fairly certain American Presidents and candidates have to do so by law. What about senior exec for corporations? Would this information reveal their loyalty to the shareholders? What about a fiance?

What about all of you?

When I was in school I worked on campus for what we called Telecom. We fixed the phones and Internets when they were not working properly. It was a great experience as a first technical job. I met some interesting individuals many of which are my friends still to this day. It was one of those interesting work environments where if you left the room for more than 15 seconds without locking your computer, when you got back a picture from uglypeople.com would be on your desktop. The ‘Oh my God’s were priceless.

On of those interesting young chaps I met there was Tri (Steve) Nguyen. Steve has become a finalist in BusinessWeek’s Best Young Entrepreneur in Asia. This is pretty funny for me because last time my friends talked about him, we were remembering how he was trying to show his Karate dominance over a concrete wall (the wall one by the way).

Congrats Steve and best of luck on your businesses.

Today like most Mondays I went to work. How about a little background to help you understand the situation.

My office is inside what used to be a house. In the back, we have an ‘employee’ entrance which is just next to a carport. This can all be nicely viewed from Google Maps. Ok, nicely is relative since you cannot see the back door. Let’s just say it is in the NW corner of centered building. You will have to trust me.

Now for the fun part.

This morning I was walking South on Washington (the street on the left), when I noticed the parking meter which is normally right outside from the rear door was replaced with hole. There was also a dirt trail down the sidewalk which splits my office and the carport (in the shadow area on the map) for about 20 feet. At the end of the dirt crumb trail was the parking meter which - without drawing conclusions - might have filled the hole nicely. There were a few quarters on the ground and the meter’s head was not to be seen. It may have been kicked off in a fit of joy, but I am no detective.

My guess, if I was to try to come up with what kind of situation would cause such a horrific disaster, would be that the ground was so mad at the parking meter - they may have been fighting - it threw it up. So forcefully in fact splattered the sidewalk and cut its head off. The head was probably eaten by the carport to never be seen again. I hope I never piss of that ground or carport.

Last night I ventured over to Dublin Pub for a US Tournament Poker game. I found out they actually play every Tuesday and there are other games run by USTP all over. If I wanted to I could play every day. I also learned there are some people who take no money, no prize, friendly games of poker way too serious.

I was pretty nervous. I guess it is because it was my first non-home game play. There were two games and in the first I was out of chips decently early (maybe 25th of 40) and was forced to watch. The second game was similar but way different. I had a low amount of chips most of the game, having won a few small hands early but not getting much after that. I sat it out and did what the call in the business as playing it tight. This actually got me to the final table where I had three chips total. That amounted to 3000 while some others had > 25k. I continued to play tight and watched as people started to give up all their chips. The next thing I knew there were two others in the game plus me and I had tripled my chips. After a few good hands, I was then tied in chips with the other two. Now it was a game.

I ended up getting second. Since there is no real gambling, we could only play for points which could then qualify you for more chips at some quarterly event. That event could qualify you for money games. So they gave me this shiny poker chip saying ‘IOU $2M’. Ok not really, but I did get a chip. Hurrah me.

I was just reading where in Vancouver they play. I guess every Sunday afternoon they play at the bar across the street from my apartment. I might try it some time; I might not.

Welp off to work.