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Posts Tagged ‘Sirius XM’
Howard Stern Announces That He’s Staying with Sirius XM for 5 More Years
December 9th, 2010 | Added to Entertainment | No Comments »
Moments ago, radio legend and media personality Howard Stern announced that he’s staying with Sirius XM for another five years. Like he normally does with big announcements, Stern drew out this announcement over a 45 minute period. He’s currently on the air talking about his schedule for the next five years and he says that, initially, he’ll be keeping the 6am through 10am time slot, four days each week. He also announced that his new contract allows him to be available via the various Sirius XM apps for iPhone and BlackBerry, which was important to him.
Stern announced that while he has signed a deal with Sirius XM, his staff hasn’t signed new contracts yet. Robin Quivers specifically stated that she’s not signed to a new contract and that her deal expires at the end of December. Of course, one would have to assume that if Stern was able to sign a new contract with the company, then the rest of his gang would be able to sign follow-on deals.
The interwebs are going to be exploding with news about Stern’s contract so if you’re a Stern fan, then I suggest logging on to the internet every few hours to see what the latest update is with this process. This is a pretty big media deal and I expect that it will generate announcements all over the entertainment world, too. Stern’s show has been one of the big drivers of original, entertaining content since he moved to Sirius XM and Stern made it sound like the folks at Sirius XM liked what his show had become and want it to stay that way.
And Lord knows the folks at Sirius XM have to be breathing a sigh of relief after they signed their biggest name to another five year contract!
As a subscriber to Sirius XM, and now that this announcement has been made, I plan on renewing my subscription when it comes due in February 2011.
Absolutely Shredding My Student Loans – Another Four Thousand Gone
November 21st, 2010 | Added to Student Loans | No Comments »
This is pretty amazing, huh? Here we are some eleven months after I began focusing all of my financial efforts on reducing my New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority (NJHESAA) student loan and the penultimate payment was just processed. That’s right, folks. The most recent reduction in my NJHESAA loan dropped the total amount owed on this student loan from about $14 thousand down to about $10 thousand.
 Down to $65 thousand overall And I expect that my next payment will be my last for this student loan.
As of today, I’ve sold off all but one of my holdings from my stock portfolio. I’m still holding on to Sirius XM’s stock because I hate to sell thousands of shares of a stock that will only go up I think the stock will go up a few more pennies in the next week or so. And since I own so many shares, those pennies can translate into big dollars (hence the name “penny stocks”). However, at this point I’m all sold out of my Ford, Barnes & Noble, and other stocks.
It sort of sucks, actually. I spent two years building up a pretty powerful portfolio and here I am two years after my very first investment was made and it’s pretty much all gone. What’s more – it’s all gone in an effort to eliminate this NJHESAA student loan! So while I’m a little annoyed that my portfolio is all but eliminated in an almost-completed successful effort to repay a single student loan, I’m glad that the loan will be gone before the end of 2010 and that I can focus on rebuilding my savings and investment accounts in 2011.
Be on the lookout here at JerseySmarts.com. When that final payment is made in the next few weeks, there’s going to be a celebration!
In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. I currently owe $65 thousand, which breaks down to $10.8 thousand owed to the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority and $54.5 thousand owed to the United States Department of Education. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.
Wow – It’s Amazing How “Off” The Motley Fool Website Is These Days…
August 16th, 2010 | Added to Money, Jobs, & Finances | 4 Comments »
Typically, I wouldn’t go out of my way to bash an investing website since I think 99% of what is produced on those investing websites is pure crap anyway. However, I was reading the Motley Fool website this morning and I have to say that I’m shocked at how ridiculous their comments have been on Barnes & Noble. In the interest of full disclosure, I own Barnes & Noble stock.
What made me do a double take this morning was this completely ridiculous line in one of their articles:
Late last month, Millsteen urged Fools to throw the book at Barnes & Noble: “Analog business in a digital age. The way CDs went to ipod, books will go to ipad or any other digital reading device. There’s very little customer traffic [in those] high rent enormous superstores that was once a weekend destination.”
I don’t know who Millsteen is or where this person comes from, but they absolutely must be among the quasi-uber-elite urbanites. I’m sorry, but I’m in the local Barnes & Noble two to three times each month and my local store is constantly packed with people. I don’t live in an urban area nor do I live in a rural area, but rather I’m in your typical suburban location and I always see people buying stuff from the store when I’m in there. Plus, there is a gigantic “nook” display directly within the entrance footpath and I’ve seen people buying those things on the spot.
However, this type of really, really bad information coming out of the Motley Fool website is pretty much what we’ve come to expect from the out-of-touch elitists at that crappy website. They have no idea what’s happening on the ground at these retail locations and they are consistently off when it comes to predicting consumer trends. Let’s not forget that this is the same website that told everyone to sell out of Sirius XM stock back when it was trading below 0.20. Meanwhile, as of this writing the stock is trading at a buck. Another blown call by the urbanites at Motley Fool.
As an investor and a consumer, I recommend staying in Barnes & Noble and buying it NOW! I stress buying it now because the stock is sorely undervalued and is, I think, ready to pop at any moment. Plus, the stock gives off a quarter-per-share dividend each quarter. That ain’t bad in this market! Whatever you do, though, don’t listen to those losers at the Motley Fool – lest you make an unintelligent investment.
Random News and Notes From All Over the Place
February 2nd, 2010 | Added to Entertainment, Random Entries | No Comments »
Normally, I write these blog entries a day or two in advance and then have them scheduled to automatically upload at a certain time of the day (usually around 11:30am). However, since there are a few random subjects that I’d like to hit on which don’t necessarily require a separate, standalone entry, I thought that I might create a quick, impromptu entry covering a bunch of random stuff.
To begin, at the beginning of January I began teaching for a well-known online/distance learning-based university. After doing this for about a month I have to admit that I’m not impressed. I thought the online teaching setting would give instructors a great deal of resources to utilize for their students to learn the course content – I was wrong. Or at least I was wrong with respect to the place where I’m teaching. I was handed a syllabus and told that I had to follow it. Then I was told that I had to utilize the online-based discussion forums and online submission tools in order to receive assignments. That wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t both filled with glitches that render their usage impossible. All in all, it makes the instructor (me) feel that I do not have much control over the class and its direction. That’s not a good feeling for an educator.
On top of it all, my pay rate (which is the least of my concerns with this arrangement) is a couple of hundred dollars per student enrolled in the course with an enrollment cap of 15. Not a bad pay rate really except that less than 5 students are enrolled in the course. Whoopie.
Two weeks ago, though, I began teaching a brand new course that I designed. This course is being taught at the local college and it has been good so far. I do have some concerns about the real-world preparedness level of the students in that at least half of the class chooses to not hand in assignments on time. I also have some concerns about the students comprehending the information that I give them in class. For example, one assignment asked students to identify a specific type of organization. We talked about these organizations for over an hour in class and two short reading assignments went in depth about the typical characteristics of these organizations. Again, more than half of the class chose groups that were not even remotely close to what the ones they were supposed to identify.
That’s somewhat troubling for the future workforce…
Hey – Lost is back on ABC tonight, huh? That’s pretty exciting. I’m looking forward to the final season of this show if only because I have to get it out of my mind! Does anyone think that all of the Lost fans out there will be completely satisfied with the “answers” that are given this season? I tend to think that the Lost writers have set themselves up for a catastrophic failure if they don’t answer every single question that is out there about the show. I guess that judgment should be reserved until after the season really gets into the swing of things. All I know is that a lot of people have invested a lot of time into watching that show and they better not blow it.
I will hopefully have some more encouraging news about my student loans coming up in the next few days. You can guess what that might be…
If you keep an eye on the market, then I’m sure that you’ve seen how Sirius XM is blowing up all over the place! For those of us that purchased this stock at a dime or two per share, we’re doing pretty good with our investment at this point. Last I checked, share prices were at 0.94. Not bad making 1000% return on an investment, huh?
And just think – if you listened to almost every big internet stock market website out there you would have sold this stock when it was down to a nickel per share. Talk about being shortsighted! That’s why I do my own research on the stocks that I purchase – the internet stock market sites have an agenda and I’m not interested in their garbage.
Oh, and I’ve been doing pretty well with Ford (which the internet stock market sites said I should have sold a year ago) and Barnes & Nobles (same story). The lesson learned here is to do your own research and trust your gut!
Eddie has been doing a fine job with running TBLWrestling.com. Hits are up an incredible percentage and I’m proud of his efforts. Good work, Eddie! I’ve been running TNAStars.com now for about a month and I’m pleased that it has already achieved some level of success. Both of these sites are hobby sites for Eddie and I and we only spend a few minutes each day putting up some updates. With such reduced involvement, I’m glad to know that the people out there like what we’re doing!
I guess that’s about it. See you tomorrow!
Album Review: Oracular Spectacular by MGMT
November 14th, 2009 | Added to Book, DVD, Movie, & Media Reviews | No Comments »
Sometimes I hear a song that I like on Sirius XM ‘s Alt Nation and I go home to find out more about the band who sings the song. Generally, I’ll then go to YouTube to hear some more of their songs and, if the band is good and the music is worth listening to, I’ll find a way to download the music either through iTunes or through some other online distribution method.
Such was the way that I wound up downloading MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular album. If you don’t know, MGMT is the band that sings one of the songs that always seems to be on Alt Nation – Kids. It’s a catchy song that mixes a bunch of different styles and sounds like a lot of fun. I’m sure that if you haven’t heard it on Alt Nation or whatever your local radio station is, that you’ll enjoy it. In fact, I’ve got a YouTube video for the song embedded below. Maybe you want to scroll down there and listen to it while you read the rest of this post (I take no responsibility for the weirdo video associated with the song).
After downloading the rest of the album, though, I don’t think that most of MGMT’s music is for me. While I’ve had some recent success with listening to (and liking) all of Cartel’s Cycle and Owl City’s Ocean Eyes, my luck ran out with MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular.
To MGMT’s credit, though, the album doesn’t have a lot of bad songs on it. In fact, most of the songs are pretty good. However, the general sound – which is a type of electronica and psychedelic blend (some even call it synthpop, but I don’t know what that means) – it just wasn’t for me. However, if you like that sort of stuff, then you’ll absolutely love MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular.
Pretty weird video, huh? So if this stuff is for you, then by all means – go and get yourself a copy of this album. But if this isn’t really your thing, then you might want to just download a copy of Kids from iTunes or Amazon.com or some other music service. If anything, that’s a pretty good song. Enjoy!
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