The BoormanBlog

After being down more than 50% in the last 52 weeks, the thing had been on a slow steady climb over the last several weeks from the $5’s to just over $6.50. Then today and I still don’t know for sure why, the thing just roared out of the gate and never looked back. The thing went up over $1.00 during the day, and a few cents more in the after hours to close at $7.69 on over 4x normal daily volume.

One could attribute this to a short squeeze, but I’m not so sure. EMKR has been in short squeezes before and it never took off like this. Folks on message boards, those bastions of truth, think a takeover is eminent; and why should I doubt them? Just ask the fine folks at Whole Foods!

What’s especially strange is that neither Mad Money, On The Money or Fast Money made a peep about it. I guess EMKR is too small a company and isn’t in the national consciousness enough to warrant attention. But yesterdays pop certainly got my attention.

After sticking with this stock going into the toilet for over a year, I am now officially in the black, though not by much, with an average share price of $7.50.

Nevertheless, I’ve got my sell orders in for the near term if this thing keeps going up. I’m going to make a little money (hopefully), and get the heck out.

Boy today was tough. I got up this morning, and my legs were still tired from running 3 out of the last 4 days for the first time in…I don’t want to know when.

In fact, I just couldn’t do it. I set my alarm clock for another hour and went back to bed.

At work, I thought it over. I can get out at a reasonable hour today, and I don’t have anything going on tonight. Maybe I can get my running done after work.

So that’s what I decided to do. But I got to tell you, I wasn’t feeling it when I got home. I was tired. But I didn’t want to think of dogging it again. I was already behind. So I did why any moron like me would do…

I drank a Red Bull (breakfast of champions!) while washing down two aspirin to thin out the blood and get that Red Bull goodness coursing through your veins even faster!

And oh, what the heck. Let’s have us a Runner’s GU for dessert.

I was ready.

I made sure to grab an old cap to wear while running this time so the %$#@ bugs wouldn’t bother me while I was running. I had fresh batteries in the Garmin and I was off.

Because of the recent rain, the trees overhead were especially wet, which seemed to adversely affect my Garmin’s reception. For more than a mile, nothing got logged, just a “Weak GPS Signal” message.

Eventually, my Garmin caught up, but I think some of my distance got missed because I had to run past my beginning point when I should have ended up where I started.

Toward the end, I was coming up on 6 miles….and 1 hour. I really did not want to go past my 10 minute mile. It wasn’t a requirement, but I had been averaging a 10 minute mile for the last few weeks.

I struggled and tried my best to sprint, but there was no sprinting after a 2 week vacation from running and several weeks of just plain dogging it before.

I huffed and puffed..my legs felt like lead jelly. 5.6 miles, 5.8 miles, 5.94 miles. I kept looking down at my Garmin and finally….

I MADE IT!!!

But let me tell you.

It

went

down

to

the

wire!

How far down to the fire?

Well, I’ll let you be the judge!

The reason I don’t know is because my Garmin’s batteries died somewhere around mile 3. I estimated the rest of the way with the sporadically placed mile markers on the trail.

Boy my legs are feeling it. Maybe it’s because I hadn’t run in two weeks, or maybe because I’ve run 3 out of the past 4 days.

Don’t matter though. I’m very behind schedule and got to get back in the game.
Tomorrow calls for 6 miles. Got fresh batteries in the Garmin. Here I go.

Getting my short runs back in.

Today: 6 miles. 58 minutes 52.90 seconds.

Getting back on track.

Today I planned to reinstall both Mandriva and XP, complete with applications, with OS and apps on different drives. Instead all I managed to get done was burn the iso to a disk.

I downloaded Mandriva 2007 spring edition from the Mandriva club: a 4.3GB file. Today I tried to burn it to a DVD using K3B.

Nope.

Can’t burn files over 4GB. What?!? The DVD-RW has room for 4.7GB don’t give me this. After some gooling, I find out it’s a K3B limitation. Great. I go to advanced settings, select “allow overburn” and try again.

No good.

So I get to the K3B home page. The newest version 1.0 (!) eliminates “that stupid 4GB limitation bug. If it’s that stupid, why didn’t they fix it sooner? I can get the newest K3B, but only if I download the source and compile myself.

Yeah right.

I’ve learned not to go to bed angry, so I’ll sign off here and continue tomorrow.

It was bound to happen. I set myself up for failure. I hadn’t run in two weeks. The last time I ran was for 13.1 miles. Today I had the bright idea, after a two week vacation, to “catch up” to the plan I got off the internet and try for 18 miles. Bad idea. Today I could only manage 8, and I walked a little bit of that towards the end.

OK. If it wasn’t obvious before, it’s obvious now. This isn’t a game. This is going to require discipline and sacrifice. Well, if I can work my way through grad school I can do this. Time to man up and go to work. Here’s my checklist.

1) Get over it - DONE!

2) No more partying until 2AM the night before your long runs. - DONE!

3) Start doing the short runs during the week again.

4) Start the long runs early in the day, like 7AM

5) Be WELL HYDRATED before the long runs

6) Eat well before the long run. Use a recipe out of Running magazine.

Everyone gets knocked down. Everyone. The question is, are you going to get back up? I know my answer

This weekend I made up my mind to reinstall Mandriva Linux. This time, I’m using the power pack which should have all the proprietary drivers I need to get my nvidia graphics card configured. Hopefully it will configure my Hauppauge TV card too.

Time will tell, but if I’m quiet for awhile, you’ll know why.

So the market had a nice big fat up day today. I’m loving it. For those playing at home:

Dow: Up 283

NASDAQ:  Up almost 50

EMKR: Up 5 1/2%

BAC: Up over 2%

Most of my mutual funds are up too!

My prediction for tomorrow? Kiss most of it goodbye as “profit taking” kicks in. Oh well. Easy come, easy go!

Yesterday Emcore (EMKR) disppointed the true believers AGAIN by coming out with a bigger 2nd quarter loss of 14 cents a share instead of 10, but upped guidance for 2007 revenues.

Suuuurreee. I’m seriously thinking of dropping this piece of crap stock. I’m down….I don’t want to say how much, but a LOT. Heck, I could have MADE money with CD’s

Like the pre-facelift Kenny Rogers said. You got to know when to fold `em. I think I’m gonna fold.

I guess I can drop the “Ain’t Got a Home” blog category now that I’ve had a home for two months now. I’ve got to say, I love living in my old stomping grounds again. One of the best reasons is, as they say, location, location, location. My condo complex is high on a hill, far recessed from the main road, so it seems like I don’t really live here, but more like living in the woods. My brother calls the place middle earth, and he’s right! What can I say? I’m fairly happy with where I live now. Who’d have thunk it?
I find myself feeling calmer too. That may be because work is slowing down a bit for the summer months too. Either way, I’ll take it

One challenge is keeping the place clean. I still haven’t unpacked all my boxes yet, and it’s always a challenge just cleaning up after myself. Today I think I moved a foot or two forward. I put some things away, answered some correspondence and such. Now all I have to do is repeat that every day for a few months and the place will be good as new (read: as good as it was 2 months ago!)