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Tomorrow has a high of six degrees in Green Bay. That might be a little cold.

Go Pack Go.

If you have not heard by now, Vancouver, USA was hit with a fancy tornado two days ago. You will be happy (I hope) to know I faired very nicely. Other than my mother calling me 15 seconds after work was over wondering if my apartment was still standing, I would not have known it was even close to my place.

In summary, I would not have really known there was a tornado if it wasn’t for the news or all my family members calling me to see if I was still alive.

Well, except one of my co-workers was not so lucky. That is right, I know a celebrity. The tornado decided with an all-knowing, divine like decision to go through his backyard. As you can expect, there was damage: no more truck and no more shed. He also came out with some trash that was not his and he did not have to pay for. Luck him.

Also luck him that he works for Formos, a place which will take a serious situation like this (or getting hit by a boat) and keep it light. He has a new nickname of Dorthy. He also logged his time for the rest of the day on Thursday under ‘Dealing with a tornado’ which is not a metaphor for writing software.

Well it is that time of the year when one is supposed to say ‘Happy New Year’ to everybody and make a list of those things which should change in their life. So, Happy New Year folks. Also here is my progress report and next step list:

• Buy a house/condo – Still on my list of things to do.
• Get my murdercycle endorsment – I am actually planning on taking the classes this winter, so I have a bike this upcoming season.
• Website – We will see.
• Learn personal finance – I am going to call this one complete. I think I have a grasp of the concept I wanted to get and have laid out a plan and goals for where I want to be and how to get there.
• Get more in shape – I got a bit lazy, followed with getting out of the habit of running and/or lifting in the last few months. I am going to start doing all this again.
• Stop those bad habits – Habits are hard to break, but I am working on it.
• Be better with phone calls – I am impressed how lazy I can be some times to not even pick up the phone. ugg.
• Learn about Financial Engineering – As a follow up goal to learning about personal finance, I have found I am fascinated with financial engineering – the process of using computer track the stock market. Think of this as a way to have computers do half of the job of the analysis. Holy crap it is fascinating.
• Continue reading – This is not really a ‘resolution’ since I do this regularly now with no hope of stopping. Financial engineering is definitely on the reading list, but any topic is fair game as long as I find it interesting.
• Post more – I got lazy and busy with other things in the last few months and my exercising, habits, and this site – among other things – took a back seat. I am going to try to get 10-15 posts a month.

That looks like a good list. If I put the bar too high, I will not accomplish anything.

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?

This week Oct 21-7 is National Save for Retirement Week. You only have four days left otherwise you will have to wait until next year to save again.