May 22, 2026
Back in the Saddle (Again)

Howdy, pardner.

Yeah ... it's been a while.

Sliding back into this little corner of cyberspace feels a bit like dusting off an old saddle you weren't sure you'd ever use again. I'm hoping to pick up somewhere near where I left off - even if "where I left off" is now several years and a few lifetimes ago.

So, why did I disappear?

Well, the usual suspects rounded me up first: family stuff, health stuff, the general chaos of being a human being in the 21st century. But there were a few other reasons, too.

One big one was the website itself. It had turned into a full-blown server hog, and keeping it alive was becoming less cost-effective and more "why am I doing this to myself?" every month. And then there was the heartbreak: my beloved charting program, QCharts, was being phased out. I swear I was the last rider left before they finally put it out to pasture. Nothing else came close to what it could do. Losing it felt like losing a best friend - the kind who always knew what you meant even when you didn't.

But the real kicker?

AI.

Not AI as in "cool new tool," but AI as in "the thing everyone said was about to replace half the workforce and make writers obsolete." Everywhere I turned, someone was declaring it the savior of humanity ... or the destroyer of jobs. And of course, writers were supposedly first on the chopping block.

I started noticing that half the articles online were being written by AI -- and annoyingly, some of them were pretty well written. It made me wonder if there was still room for human voices at all. The thought crept in that maybe I should just saddle up one last time and ride off into the sunset.

But here's the twist: After actually using AI for a couple of years, I realized something important.

It's not sentient. Not even close.

Sure, it can banter. It can help me brainstorm greeting card lines. It can be clever in short bursts. But when I try to take it deeper -- into the weird, nuanced, esoteric corners of thought -- it hits a wall. It starts repeating itself. It gets confused. Sometimes it spirals into reductio ad absurdum territory so fast it makes my head spin.

Maybe future versions will fix that. Maybe not. Either way, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

What I do know is this: We're not doomed. Writers aren't going extinct. And the human point of view -- messy, emotional, contradictory, soulful -- still matters.

So I'm back. Not to compete with AI, but to coexist with it. I'll use it the way I always have: to gather information, check facts, and explore alternative angles. But the writing? The voice? The spark?

That stays mine.

I'm not a Luddite ... but I'm also not handing over the reins.

May 20, 2026
From the Wayback Machine: The Race to a $Trillion

In his best-selling book called "The Four: The Hidden DNA of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google", author Scott Galloway ponders the question of which of these and other tech companies (including Microsoft) will be the first to reach the $1 Trillion mark in terms of market capitalization. For new investors, market capitalization (or "market cap" for short) is computed by taking the number of outstanding shares of stock multiplied by the current price of a single share. For example, if a company has 10,000 outstanding shares and its stock price is at $12, then it has a market cap of 10,000 x $12 = $120,000.

Galloway predicts that Apple may be the winner, but his prediction was made in late fall last year prior to publication. Let's see if his prediction is still on track.

Here are the current market capitalizations of the above tech names including Microsoft:

• AAPL $943B
• AMZN $883B
• MSFT $821B
• FB $504B
• GOOGL $359B

(For reference, here are the market caps of other large US companies in non-tech sectors: JP Morgan/Chase (JPM) $379B, Exxon/Mobil (XOM) $345B, Berkshire-Hathaway BRK.A $223B.)

So, it does indeed appear that Apple is still the frontrunner but Amazon and Microsoft are nipping at its heels. Just one bad quarter or a downward revision may be enough to put Apple's first place position in jeopardy. For Apple's market cap to fall to that of Amazon's current market cap ($883B) means that Apple shares would be trading at $179.5.

Today, Apple is trading around $191.5/share so it would only take a 6.2% move to drop it to $179.5. That's not unrealistic at all considering its share price dropped over 16% in the latter part of January/early February.

Does Apple have something to worry about? If price appreciation is any indication (and that's a question for fundamentalists), then perhaps it does.

Recently, Apple shares have significantly under-performed both those of Amazon and Microsoft. Since July 20th of last year (2017), Amazon shares are up 76%, Microsoft's are up 43%, while Apple shares come in a distant third at 27% (which isn't shabby considering that the S & P gained 13% in that time). But if Apple's share price keeps on going at this rate, it won't take long for the others to over-take it.

The race to a trillion is heating up and seeing who first crosses the finish line will be exciting. Just wonder what the odds are at Vegas...

(Originally published 7/20/2018)