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We had nothing scheduled for this evening, so we decided to do some things in the yard. First was to plant some mums that we had bought recently. We didn’t really plant them – we left the mums in their pots but set the pots down in the dirt a little. That was somewhat for better curb appeal but more to keep the wind from knocking over the pots.

Next was to water the vegetable garden and the potted flowers. That’s an easy job – the kids are eager to volunteer. “Who wants the hose?” I ask, and they come running. The hard part is making sure they take turns and don’t drown some plants while ignoring others.

Then, since the hose was out and running, the kids asked if we could get out the sprinkler. I thought that would be a fine way to keep them outside, so I got the sprinkler. It’s the type that spins, but they don’t like it to spin. Once it was setup, they started pulling plastic toys out of the shed. They also pulled out the lawn chair. I think it was meant to hold their towels, but I commandeered it so I could sit and read the issue of the Inspire that came today.

It was quite peaceful – the kids had found the T-ball set and placed it right next to the sprinkler and were playing waterball.  There were no bugs, particularly mosquitoes.  I don’t know whether that was because of the slight breeze or because I had sprayed for them last week.  I was thinking “This is what summer is supposed to be.”

Then I noticed some dark pick-up truck stop on the side of the road, just after our driveway.  A couple of people came around the side of the truck and started moving things in the bed.  I figured they just had to adjust their freight.  Then some more people appeared.  I saw the freight, and it was a cooler.  The local high school cross-country team was on a training run, and they decided to place their water break right in front of our house.

That’s when I realized that summer was officially closing.  Cross-country camp, football starting across the nation, planting mums – they all add to equal the start of fall.  All good things, but summer needs to last a little longer.

“You have established all the boundaries of the earth; You have made summer and winter.”
– Psalm 74:17

What makes a game a game and a sport a sport?

Games are something that people can do for fun. Sports are not. Track and Field is generally a sport, because you don’t have people playing a pick-up game of pole vault.

They’re called the Olympic Games. There are a lot of games in there, but there are some real sports too. Swimming is mostly a sport – who swims the butterfly for fun? But diving could be considered game-ish.

Things that require subjective judging are usually games, as sports have clear and obvious scores. If you have the fastest time or longest distance or whatever, then you’re the winner. Watching some of the Olympic events, I wondered what would happen if we applied subjective scoring to other events. What prompted that was the interminable wait after some of the gymnastics events until the gymnast’s score was determined.

What if that same method was applied to something else, such as the 100-yard dash? Okay, officially it is known as the 100-meter dash, but we all know they just renamed the event to make it sound internationalish. Anyway, what if the race finished, but we had to wait until they added individual level-of-difficulty to everyone’s time, and then they subtracted some deductions for things like bad form? That would make for a very tedious competition and would not be very entertaining. Hmm… now that I think about it some more, that sounds a lot like the BCS formula.

But not all things that are objective are sports. Table tennis has obvious scoring, but it is a game. People play it for fun – the same with volleyball. Plus volleyball is too much fun to be a pure sport. Sports are things that are not fun in and of themselves, like marathons. Sure the event of the marathon may be fun, with live bands and people cheering. But the running part of the marathon, without those other things, is no fun.

“Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.”
– 1 Corinthians 9:25

I bought a small bookshelf to help organize the toys in the living room. The bookshelf was the assemble-it-yourself kind. I have done some of those before, so I expected it to be no problem. I got out the instructions and set all the boards in nice little piles according to their type.

The first page of the instructions said which tools were needed for the project. If you can see the picture below, you’ll notice that it shows only a hammer is needed. I thought that was nice – a simple shelf that needs only some dowels and nails pounded.

I then looked at the second page of instructions. If you can see the picture below, you’ll notice that it shows that I was to attach some screws. I thought that was odd – how am I to attach screws using a hammer?

I briefly contemplated hammering in the screws. But I ignored the instructions and used a screwdriver instead.

“So the craftsman encourages the smelter, {And} he who smooths {metal} with the hammer {encourages} him who beats the anvil, Saying of the soldering, “It is good”; And he fastens it with nails, {So that} it will not totter.”
– Isaiah 41:7

And the winner is…OVR. That’s right, Oversold with Improving RSI, combined with Overbought with Declining RSI, put on a very strong last leg to finish well ahead of the other contenders.

What does that mean? What is my conclusion? I think I’ll use OVR as one of the inputs of my stock-buying decisions. It might make a fine stock screener to provide a list of potential stocks. An 19% return in one month is impressive, but all that means is that it warrants a closer look.

On a related note, don’t use CCI Signals and Parabolic SAR Signals as stock screeners. Those were returning 200, 300, and even 599 stocks for one day. A stock screener that returns 599 stocks is not very useful to me, so I removed those from the list at the beginning of this month-long test. I want a stock screener that returns a few dozen stocks, at most.

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This is not an offer to buy or sell any securities. Any information on this site is general in nature and is not intended to be financial advice for your specific situation. Trading stocks carries risks that should be discussed with a professional financial advisor. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Use at your own risk. This post was written in a facility that processes peanuts.

Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.
– 1 Corinthians 9:24

Since the football season is starting (and there was much rejoicing), I thought it would be appropriate to note some similarities between football and families with small children.

The first correlation is not specific to football, but to any college sport. A few weeks ago we checked into the local junior kindergarten/pre-kindergarten/young fives program. Our son has a birthday that is late in the year, but it is before the official cut-off date for enrollment in school. The principal of the school said not to think of having the extra year as holding back your child. She said to think of it as red-shirting your child. That makes it sound a lot better.

The second correlation has to do with the number of kids in the family. This correlation fits with fewer sports, but is still not unique to football. We were talking with someone who has four children. When he heard that we are expecting our third child, his comment was that we would have to switch from man-to-man to zone defense. Ah yes, our play-calling will have to change.

“So there was much rejoicing in that city.”
– Acts 8:8

Our church is looking to have some changes done to the building, so we retained an architect to draw plans for the work. His initial proposal gave us a few options, and we are to select which option we want and then he will draw the real plans.

For the initial proposal, there was a rendered drawing of how the church would look with a certain change. One of the church members commented to the architect that the drawing looked pretty good, and then he asked him what software program he used to do the 3-D drawing. The architect’s response was “Google Sketchup“.

I hadn’t thought of asking that question, and I certainly didn’t expect the architect’s answer. I figured they must have some expensive architectural-type software that they use. But apparently Sketchup is good enough for them, and probably easier than whatever they have. And the price is good, of course, like all of Google’s products.

Some people worry about having all of their computer stuff run by Google – putting all their eggs in one basket. Iit is certainly possible to do just about everything online through a Google service. If anything happens to Google, or something changes such as now some things are pay services, then you would have to change your whole online experience if you used Google products for everything. But I don’t see that as a likely event.

This week, I am posting the results of the third week of tracking certain indicators. This week shows how those indicators have fared two weeks after the last changes to the portfolio.

It had looked like the Oversold with Improving RSI would be the winner, but this week it took a downturn. And the Moving Average Crossover 50/200 jumped into the lead. That’s for the NASDAQ. For the NYSE, Oversold with Improving RSI widens its lead over Bollinger Bands, which had been running strong until now. I think it has hit the point where the indicators are not performing as well as they should, because portfolio is not being kept current with the buy and sell signals. I think I’ll run one more week of this.

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“One hand full of rest is better than two fists full of labor and striving after wind.”
– Ecclesiastes 4:6