Now for something that’s not stupid bands and stupid video games. I’ve started day trading a little bit of stock. Backstory:

When you’re negotiating an initial salary or a raise at my current job the powers that be will always heavily harp on stock awards being the most fruitful part of your compensation. It was tough for me to get comfortable with at first. I was used to the standard “paycheck comes twice-per-month and by the end of the year we’ll have paid you your entire salary” thing. The occasional bonus was always nice, but it was never guaranteed (well, it sorta was when I was in investment banking, but we all know the problems that those practices have caused in the last 15 months …). Anyway, you get a whole fuck-ton of shares, which sounds great, but you don’t get them all at once. There’s a schedule. Each “award” you get is on a different schedule. When I was first hired, I got a schedule of 10% the first year, 15% the second year, and 75% the third year. When I got my first bonus I got a new award that was 50/50 over two years. When we got purchased by a large company I got a new award that was 33/33/33 over three years. I got another award last year that was 20/20/60. It’s a little bit confusing, but ultimately pretty cool to get an email every once in awhile that a whole bunch of stock was available for you to do whatever you wanted with. The effect of this kinda sucked at the beginning, because it generally came at the expense of a better salary and the awards weren't super substantial at the beginning. But now that they're becoming more significant, it’s great. I’ve essentially pretended that this stuff didn’t exist for awhile, and have learned how to live on the budget that my salary alone pays me. Now it’s like I have this whole other thing that makes me feel good about not saving as much as I would’ve liked to over the last few years.

Lots of boring details, I guess. But I’m in a place now in which I have this stock in a Schwab account with some cizash in it, don’t really need the money for anything, know enough about portfolio management to know that I need to diversify it, and have a little bit of free time at work. I’ve started small with some buys of GE and PRX, and am going to see how that goes before diving in much more. But it’s sort-of exciting. You know, like gambling is. I’d like to get to a place where I have long positions in about 30 companies, with a little extra cash to fuck around with some short stuff. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll put what’s left in a Bodog account and start betting on Football. My picks is naztee when there’s no real money on the line.