R.I.P. Joe Paterno

I’ve never followed Penn State but as a college football fan I always had a lot of respect for Joe Paterno. Recent events at PSU have been sad and I hope justice will be served.

The Kentucky men will likely move up to #1 in the polls as Syracuse finally lost a game yesterday, at Notre Dame, 67-58. The only remaining unbeaten team is Murray State from the western part of the Bluegrass state.

How fun must it be to be a Florida State fan after routing North Carolina then going to Duke and ending a long home winning streak by the Devils.

The Ohio State men had no trouble in Lincoln last night. I am thinking maybe Missouri will be ranked #2 coming off a big win at Baylor 89-88. That would put Ohio State at #3.

The Kentucky women are alone atop the SEC as the only unbeaten team. The Cats host Florida this afternoon in what could be a trap game as UK has already beaten the Gators in Gainesville.

The Ohio State women have looked good since the loss to Michigan and will play host to Illinois today.

January options expiration

My January 30 calls on GIS were exercised which closed out the short position in the shares. It was a break-even proposition.

My January 25 calls on ORCL were exercised so I am now long the shares. I paid 7.27 for the calls but my effective basis in the shares is 25.00. This is a losing position currently (if you don’t count premiums received on calls written) but I am happy to hold ORCL at these levels.

My January 35 calls on JWM were exercised which closed out the short position in the shares. Loss on the position was 28 cents which was the time premium in effect when the calls were purchased. (The intrinsic value of the calls and the profit on the short sale offset). This does not include premium received on call writes. Those profits have already been recorded.

The January 17.50 calls I wrote on GE were assigned so my long position was called away. Profit on the written calls was 0.85 and on the common was 0.56 for a total of 1.41.

Last but not least, I had written Jan 60 calls on WLT so the stock was called away. Profit on the calls was 1.58 and on the common was .43 for a total of 2.01.

To summarize what remains: I am holding long positions in MET, TEVA, ORCL and YHOO with the intent to write covered calls on these. I expect all four to move higher and will wait until they do so before selling calls.

I have a call calendar spread on MSFT, long January 2013 20-strike calls and short February 28 calls.

Logbook of The World

I have finally begun using Logbook of The World (LoTW). This system, sponsored by the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), allows hams to upload their station logs for comparison with other participants. When a contact that you claim with another station is verified by comparison with the other station’s log, the contact is usable for ARRL awards. Ordinarily, a paper QSL card would be required. Those are getting expensive to collect, and so LoTW allows for award hunting without postal expense.

The Blue Jackets returned home and got their first win under interim coach Todd Richards Friday night, a 4-3 decision over Phoenix. But, the following night saw another 2-1 loss to San Jose. Two more home games are coming up this week.

The Kentucky women beat Tennessee in Lexington Thursday night, then traveled to Columbia and came from behind to beat South Carolina today. So, the Cats are the only team still unbeaten in SEC play. After beating Northwestern Thursday night, the Ohio State women traveled to East Lansing and beat Michigan State this afternoon.

The Kentucky men played Tennessee as well and won in Knoxville Saturday. The Ohio State men blew out Indiana today, avenging an earlier loss in Bloomington.

Arniel fired

Scott Arniel was fired Monday as head coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets. Todd Richards has taken over as interim coach. Since my last post, the only CBJ wins were at Dallas on December 29th (4-1, the first regulation win on the road this season) and a 1-0 win in Los Angeles last Saturday night (first shutout of the season). Steve Mason has been miserable in goal. Curtis Sanford has been OK but not great.

The OSU men’s team had two tough road losses at Indiana and Illinois, and are in sixth place in the conference with a record of 3-2. The Kentucky men beat Louisville 69-62 (a team which has since completely collapsed) and faces Auburn in a few minutes in the SEC.

The Ohio State women finally lost a game, a 73-62 setback in Ann Arbor. So the Bucks are 2-1 in the conference. The Kentucky women lost at Middle Tennessee, but have since gone 3-0 in conference play. The Cats host Tennessee Thursday night.

The up-trending stock market has turned a lot of people bullish. I’m not doing much in the way of new buying, and have taken some profits in this rally.

I have gotten setup  for JT-65, a fairly new and popular digital mode being used on the ham bands. It is a very slow-speed mode (it takes about 6 minutes for two stations to exchange call signs and signal reports). But the low data rate means that it is tolerant of low signal-to-noise ratio environments. It is possible to make contacts with JT-65 that are impossible with other modes.

I’m continuing to have fun with D-Star, the new digital-voice mode in amateur radio. We have an excellent set of repeaters here which are maintained by an enthusiastic group of local hams. If you are active on D-Star, get in touch with me and we will try a QSO sometime.

I operated for 13 hours in the ARRL RTTY “Roundup” contest over the weekend, making 367 contacts. My power output was between 50-70 watts.

Happy Holidays!

It’s a bit late for me to be extending holiday greetings but the 12 Days of Christmas are still upon us. And I hope everyone has a wonderful 2012. I have been off work for a couple weeks and have been using that time to get caught up on a lot of things around here that have needed doing.

The road has been rough for the UK ladies since my last post. The Cats lost at Notre Dame, but still moved up to #6 in the latest poll. Last night Kentucky traveled to Murfreesboro and lost to Middle Tennessee 70-58. It reminded me of the collapse at Louisville last year. Hopefully something positive can come out of a nasty loss.

The Ohio State women continue rolling along. The OSU men opened conference play last night with an 87-54 win over visiting Northwestern, a team that gave the Buckeyes fits last year. Sullinger did not seem troubled with the back problems that kept him out of action earlier in the year. Sully got kicked in the foot during the Bucks’ win at South Carolina. A quick x-ray showed no broken bones, and he made a quick recovery.

Big games coming up. The OSU men travel to Indiana Saturday, site of Kentucky’s only loss this season. UK plays host to Louisville which is coming off a home loss last night to Big East rival Georgetown. The OSU women travel to Wisconsin to open conference play and UK goes to Florida.

The Blue Jackets have not won a game since my last post. Neither goaltender is playing particularly well right now.

After using paper logbooks my entire amateur radio career I am switching to a program called winlog32. It looks very good, and is free to use. It was written by Colin, G0CUZ who provides excellent support. I was happy to make a financial contribution towards his development efforts.

Logging on computer will make it much easier to upload QSO information to Logbook of The World, which I am determined to make work after several earlier problems. LoTW is rapidly gaining acceptance within the amateur community.

The Road Unkind

The men went out on the road for the first time and suffered their first losses of the season.

With Jared Sullinger out with back spasms, Ohio State lost in Kansas 78-67. I thought the rest of the team gave a good effort, at an extremely tough place to play. Sullinger did not start last night but did play a good bit in an 82-58 win over South Carolina-Upstate.

I didn’t get to see Kentucky’s game in Bloomington but the Hoosiers won 73-72 on a buzzer beating shot by Christian Watford.

The women keep rolling along. Kentucky beat Duke in Rupp Arena in front of a crowd of 14,508, the largest attendance ever for a women’s game at UK. Next up for the Cats is a trip to Notre Dame on Sunday. Ohio State continues undefeated as well.

The Blue Jackets’ old nemesis Nashville came to Columbus and won 4-3 in overtime, after trailing 3-1 with just a few minutes to play. Columbus also had a two-goal lead on visiting Boston before losing 5-3. Steve Mason got the start in goal for the first time in weeks this past Tuesday, and Columbus beat Vancouver 2-1. I am guessing Arniel will stick with Mason for awhile as long as the kid keeps playing well. The Jackets host the Kings tonight.

I operated almost 15 hours in the ARRL Ten-Meter Contest this past weekend. Made 300 contacts (most of which were on CW but some ‘phone) all running 5 watts.

I had an interesting contact with station W9UX on 40-meters last week, using Morse Code. Terry in Madison, Wisconsin was running one-half of a watt. You can see a video recording of it here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/18996960

A couple nice wins for the ladies

Today’s Louisville-Kentucky women’s matchup looked on paper to be close. But the Cats took control mid-way through the first half and held on for a 74-54 win. This series has seen a lot of routs lately. Kentucky lost in Louisville by 26 last year, and the Cats won big the previous time they played in Lexington.

The Ohio State women traveled to Oklahoma and beat the Sooners by 6 this afternoon. Good road win against a traditional power team.

I operated for five hours in the 10-Meter RTTY contest this weekend. Made 119 QSOs running about 50 watts. It’s a fun contest since no one is allowed to use more than 100 watts. We often have some sporadic-E (short skip) this time of year, but I didn’t observe any this weekend. But I did have some good runs of Europeans and stations in the western-US. Could not work any of the Japanese stations, but did have some South Africans call me.

3-in-a-row for the Big Ten

After struggling for a decade, the Big Ten has won the Big Ten/ACC Challenge for the third year in a row. The big game for me was Ohio State’s 85-63 win over visiting Duke. In the other headliner, Wisconsin played well in Chapel Hill before losing to North Carolina 60-57.

The next game for the OSU men is a visit to Kansas next Saturday.

The Blue Jackets have been in western Canada. Thursday night they scored two goals late to tie Calgary, then Rick Nash won the game in a shootout. That game was bracketed by losses in Vancouver and Edmonton so the trip hasn’t really been a success so far. Columbus will come back east and visit Montreal before coming home for a long home stand, which includes another meeting with defending Stanley Cup champion Boston.

Anthony Davis blocked a shot with just seconds to go in Rupp Arena earlier today, and Kentucky beat North Carolina 73-72 to remain unbeaten. That’s two in-a-row for the Cats over the Heels, as UK beat UNC in an NCAA regional final last year. Last year’s regular-season meeting between the two was in Chapel Hill which North Carolina won by 2.

The Ohio State women got a scare from Florida State, and had to go to overtime to win. Tayler Hill had a career-high 31 points to keep the Bucks unbeaten. A big test comes tomorrow as OSU visits perennial power Oklahoma.

The Kentucky women are still unbeaten but the upcoming schedule is incredible. Of the next four games, three are with Louisville, Duke and Notre Dame, all three of which are ranked in the top ten.

The stock market continues volatile, but it was good to see a nice rally after the murderous Thanksgiving week. I think now one needs to let things cool off a bit before putting more money into stocks.

Lots of amateur radio stuff going on here. I had several nice QSOs on D-Star (mentioned previously) and it sure is a lot of fun. The North American QRP CW Club has an interesting “operating challenge” for the month of December: Ragchews lasting 20 minutes or more. I’ve already completed two such QSOs, and it always reminds me of my early days in the hobby as HF CW was the first thing I was able to do. Last but not least, there is an RTTY contest tomorrow on 10-meters only (starts tonight at 7 PM Eastern time). If the band is good, it should be a fun contest.

Number One and Number Two

With North Carolina’s loss to UNLV, Kentucky and Ohio State are #1 and #2 respectively in this week’s college basketball polls. Kentucky plays North Carolina this Saturday in Rupp Arena. The Buckeyes play Duke tomorrow night in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge. So both the Cats and the Bucks have good tests coming up soon.

The Ohio State women beat LSU yesterday, and I noticed the Buckeyes are in the Top 20 now. The Kentucky women blew out Mississippi Valley State. The Cats’ defense has been awesome, and they are forcing their opponents into an incredible number of turnovers.

Urban Meyer has been formally announced as the new head football coach at Ohio State. I also was glad to see that Luke Fickell is staying in Columbus. He will be the defensive coordinator under Meyer.

The Blue Jackets lost to the Blues last night 2-1 in regulation. That is the first game that Curtis Sanford started that did not produce any points. But St. Louis has been on top of its game with new coach Ken Hitchcock (a Columbus cast-off).

I have a nice list of new stocks to buy, and positions to be added to. But the market ran away to the upside today. If we meander back down, I will be looking to put money to work in the market.

I purchased a D-Star handi-talkie a couple months back, and finally got it programmed yesterday. I made a QSO with a ham in England which is the first time I had actually used the rig. D-Star stands for “Digital Smart Technology for Amateur Radio”. It combines digital voice/data transmission over the air along with over the Internet. So with repeater stations downtown, I am able to “work the world” with a handheld low-power transceiver.

Two long streaks come to an end

Finally! Kentucky has beaten Tennessee. After 26-straight losses to the Vols, the Cats win 10-7, using Matt Roark at quarterback. Roark would be considered “third string”, and is really a wide receiver. Neither team was very good on offense, but the final score is all that matters.

Ohio State played well but lost in Ann Arbor 40-34. That ends 8 wins in a row for the Buckeyes in “The Game”. It appears that Urban Meyer will be named head coach at OSU soon.

The Blue Jackets continue to roll along with Curtis Sanford in goal. Last night Columbus avenged an earlier loss in Buffalo with a 5-1 win over the Sabres in Columbus.