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Next week’s title: “Big Ern’s ‘Running out of Puns’ Locks of the Week”.

After going cold turkey on the favorites last week, it’s time to put one tentative foot down off the wagon.

Enjoy.

SAN FRANCISCO +2.5 over Seattle
New England -8 over CINCINNATI
Tampa Bay +3 over CAROLINA

Last week: 2-1
This year: 4-4

Here we are, last weekend, at Electronic Vagrant’s Hawaiian luau themed east coast wedding celebration…

From left: EV, ACOM, Zach, Elroy

For a better way to track Zach’s investment progress, I suggest he sign up for one of two (or both) sites that allows people to track investments online:
Cake
Covestor

Please refer to my previous post for more info.

I signed up for both, but Covestor was the only one I could (manually, they did it) import my portfolio into. I have 5 invites to Covestor if anyone wants one, otherwise, I submitted my e-mail and received an invite the next day.
If you’d like to track my investments on Covestor (you have to sign up and have your portfolio imported first): tarfelroy

Another cool thing about Covestor, if Zach used it, is the option to add Blog Widgets. So, Zach can add widgets that highlight the stocks he just bought. Or, to prove to us he is a credible investor, he could have added a widget with his investment record.
Two examples of widgets (stocks I actually own):

Obviously, one I am doing well on and the other I am not. I am long on both of these stocks and with my current strategy, will sell them in about 3 months (gain or loss).

I’m not blogging about investment advice in this post, just adding my suggestions about how to effectively communicate investments and track investment history. Good luck, happy investing.

DISCLAIMER: If Covestor turns evil, steals all your info and your money, don’t blame me.

At this point, I assume you’ve read The Secrets of My Success and committed the fool-proof rules to memory. Considering the hot hot heat that post generated, I’m going to blog my next few stock transactions and watch the praise/bile roll in.

Today’s number one stunner is AT&T (NYSE:T). I bought in at 42.25 a few minutes ago, after it dropped $0.58 this morning. Classic example of “good company on a bad day”. (I hope.)

Remember kids, we’re only in this for the short haul (1-2% gain, hopefully next week). So, if you haven’t signed up for Zecco and their commision-free trades, I would do that. Immediately.

Also, if I’m violating SEC rules by saying “buy this, it’s going to go up”. I hope someone will let me know before they kick in Nate’s door and put him (and his cats) in Gitmo.

In the name of disclosure (and evaluating my wicked good judgement), right now I am holding:

• American Software, Inc. (AMSWA)
• AT&T (T)
• Exelexis (EXEL)
• Scholastic (SCHL)

Good luck, hopefully I’ll see you at the boat showroom.

Like many of you, I work in a nondescript office, in a nondescript job. I’m not complaining, I’m just saying that the big issues of the day might not be geopolitics or negotiating a 30 million dollar order of sprockets. Well, I’ve come to you my fellow readers to help resolve the big office issue of the day. Who am I kidding, I’ll be lucky if I get one or two of my fellow VwW bloggers to respond.

I will start by saying there is an unwritten man code that defines how we use the restroom. Some of you may have played this game before. It is a good summary of the decisions we must make every time we enter the restroom. This leads to the problem I have. The restroom has a three urinal setup with the little urinal dividers which are great for that extra privacy. The first two urinals are ordinary, but the third one is kid sized.

That leaves the question:
Does it make me any less manly if I use the kid urinal if someone is occupying the preferred urinal #1 location?
Do the mini-walls make it okay for me to crowd #1 and use full size #2 because we already have a personal space divider?

Also, if by chance the building manager is reading this, please put scales in the bathroom. Betting on poop size really makes the day go by faster.

This is a friendly reminder that tonight, 9pm ET/8pm CT, is the season premiere of the greatest show on television.

I know, I may have to defend myself against a few raving lunatics who say that The Wire, 24, House, or Entourage takes the cake (or in Zach’s case: The View), but I stand firm.

See you in Scranton.

Over the last month or so, I’ve played with a few online productivity/task list tools (Tracks, GTDTracks, Vitalist) and they all have come up a little short for me.

I’ve used Todoist for the last 2 weeks or so and, like Jordan Bratman, I don’t think I’m going to do much better than this.

A few of the things I like about it:

Clean Interface
After hiding the info page with one click, all you see are your tasks, projects, and a minmalist search window. No clutter on the screen.

Dates/Times
Maybe the coolest feature. Tired of clicking around in Outlook, setting a deadline for something that has to be done tomorrow by noon? I’m not going to check (it takes too long), but I’d guess it takes at least 12 clicks in several different date, time, scheduling boxes. In todoist you just type “tomorrow @ 12″, “friday @ 12″, or even “tom @ 12″. Schedule recurring tasks by putting an “every” or “ev” in front of the date. I defy you to set up a recurring task in any other system with fewer key strokes than “ev 15″ (Every 15th of the month) or “ev mon” (every Monday).

Contexts
If you’re practicing your GTD mantra, or just sorting things out, you can add contexts to your tasks by simply adding “@home”, “@work”, etc… to the task description. Unlike GTDTracks and Vitalist you can add multiple contexts to tasks you can get done either at home or in the car, or wherever.

Prioritization
Similar to adding contexts, adding priorities is simple. “!p1″ makes the task a top level priority, “!p2″ a second level priority, and so on. There are 4 levels, each color coded.

Keyboard Shortcuts
Along with dates, the keyboard shortcuts are what really make Todoist stand out. Adding tasks, promoting and demoting tasks and projects, sorting, and much more can be done with shortcuts.

Launchy/iGoogle/Integration
Adding the Todoist DLL to your Launchy program folder allows you to add tasks to todoist using Launchy. ‘Nuf said. I haven’t used the iGoogle widget yet, but I imagine it works wonderfully. A Firefox extension for g-mail lets you send e-mails directly to your task list. And so on. There are Quicksilver and Mac Dashboard plug-ins and widgets, but, like Pony Parties (definately not linking to that, look it up yourself), I won’t admit to knowing anything about how they work.

Chaining
I haven’t done much chaining (a la Seinfeld), but it is equally easy to implement.

Price
It’s $3 per month for the premium level. That gets you SSL, reminders (MSN, Jabber, Twitter, chaining, and other labeling capabilities. You probably spend at least $3/month on plastic silverware, replacement earring backs, and contraception. Todoist is more important than any of those things. Just think how quick it will be to type “[Ctrl-A] Go to planned parenthood, take care of it [Tab] tom @ 8″.