Chris Carosa %

Welcome to the Real New Year

By Chris Carosa on September 13, 2016

The calendar doesn’t say summer ended during that first week of September, but we all know it did. How many of us squeezed out those last few days, those last few hours, those last few minutes, together with family, friends, or just within our own thoughts. Each year, the long Labor Day weekend becomes a bittersweet reminder of the promises of June, soon to become forever just another memory.

For me it’s the tastes, the smells, and the sounds I remember most. They’re all so interwoven I can no longer distinguish one sense from another. Is it the taste of the aroma from a field full of wildflowers? Is it the smell of those late summer nights, its muggy air thick with the chirps of crickets and twinkling with the flicker of fire flies? Is it the sound of those sumptuous family meals, whether cookouts, roasts, or omnipresent macaroni dishes? It’s all a blur, a collage of happiness, a pleasant memorial to the waning moments of freedom.

What I most forlornly recall, though, are the last visits. For far too many times, the Continue Reading “Welcome to the Real New Year”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged end of summer, Gregorian, Julian, new school year, Roman calendar

To The Final Frontier… and BEYOND!

By Chris Carosa on September 6, 2016

As a kid, when you visit older cousins you rarely see, you step tentatively. Going through the front door of their house, you step tentatively. Pacing through their immaculate living room, you step tentatively. Finally, when the adults take their leave and you’re left alone with your cousin and he invites you into his play room, you step tentatively.

First of all, he’s older than you. That makes him smarter, which means he can trick you in almost every dimension. Second, he’s Continue Reading “To The Final Frontier… and BEYOND!”

Posted in Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Balance of Terror, Bewitched, for the Defense, Judd, Marlo Thomas, My Three Sons, Star Trek, The Dick Cavett Show, The Enemy Below, The Tammy Grimes Show

Are Better Educated People Easier to Fool with Persuasion Tricks?

By Chris Carosa on August 30, 2016

The following is mere observation. You’ll understand why I’ve had to put the (rare) qualified at the beginning of the piece when you get to the end.

As I am wont to do given the demands of my primary profession – that would be picking (hopefully) winning stocks – I tend to read a lot. There are two types of articles I read. The first you might consider obvious. I read about anything that smacks of “the coming thing.” I want to know about the leading edge before the “L” in “Leading” appears. To do this, you’ve got to read a ton of articles detailing wild and crazy ideas and hope you’re alert enough to connect the dots before the rest of the (investing) world does. Then you find a publicly traded company (hopefully no one has paid attention to for a long time) and begin buying. This way, when the euphoria of that crazy idea reaches its climax and the rest of the (investing) world is doing everything it can to buy that stock, you can ride into that rising wave, confident you can sell (for a tidy profit) to those over-eager buyers.

OK, like I said, that was obvious.

The less obvious type of article I read doesn’t talk about wild and crazy ideas that become products. Instead, these articles provide potent examples of just how wild and crazy Continue Reading “Are Better Educated People Easier to Fool with Persuasion Tricks?”

Posted in Business Tips, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Clinton, sales, Trump

Olympian Thoughts…

By Chris Carosa on August 16, 2016

What’s with the pageantry of the opening ceremony of the Olympics? I’m sorry. I just never got into watching the Rose Bowl Parade. Show the actual game, then I might be inclined to sit a spell and take in the sport.

You can well appreciate, then, my attitude going into this year’s Summer Olympics presented a less than enthusiastic air. Left to my own devices, I would have skipped the entire spectacle, opting instead for a series of classic John Wayne movies. Alas, we have a “stay-at-home-son” (as he refers to himself) who, doing his best to maintain male stereotypes, can’t go a day, an hour, a minute, a second, without sports. Thus was I imprisoned in my own home, forced fed a steady diet of Olympian athletic cuisine.

“What the heck,” I thought. “Why not turn lemons into lemonade?” And so, what follows represents the good, the bad, and the ugly of my experience perched in front of the magic Continue Reading “Olympian Thoughts…”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Beach Volleyball, Bill Murray, Bob Costas, Mario Cuomo, Michael Phelps, NBC, Olympics, patriotism, Ryan Seacrest

Soaring With The Eagle… and Beyond

By Chris Carosa on August 9, 2016

It snows a lot in the towns south of Buffalo. That’s why they call them the snow belts. So when a young dad wants to teach his two small sons the fundamentals of football, he only has one option: The finished basement of the raised ranch home he built for his family.

That young dad was my father, and those two young sons were the six and seven year-old version of my brother and me. There we were, in our bare feet (lest we slip on the linoleum tiles), running and defending simple pass patterns drawn by our father on the cold basement floor. We’d take turns. One series of plays I was the receiver and Kenny was the defender. The next series of plays Kenny was the receiver and I was the defender. We could barely catch the oversized ball, let alone comprehend the intricacies of basic square outs, buttons, and hooks.

Yet we persevered. Such was our enthusiasm to play the sport that no amount of failure could discourage us. More important, though, were those reassuring words I remember my Continue Reading “Soaring With The Eagle… and Beyond”

Posted in Boy Scouts, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Abbott Parkway, Be Prepared, Camp Cutler, Do Your Best, Eagle Scout, football, Kenny, merit badge, Plan Ahead, Sam Butera

All Quiet on the Email Front

By Chris Carosa on August 2, 2016

For nearly two days now the many email folders in my universe have remained quiet. It’s called “propagation” in the jargon of internet specialists. I call it “bliss.” I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be off the grid. A long, long time ago (in what seems like a far distant galaxy), I shunned email. Does this surprise you? It should and it shouldn’t. I’ve always told people I was either born fifty years too early or fifty years too late. The former is revealed in my affinity for such things as classic trains, old time Americana, and the Marx Brothers. The latter manifests itself through my enthusiasm for astronomy and space exploration, the social possibilities of crowd-based technology solutions, and the new media.

Truth be told, for all the technology edges I’ve found leading, I’m really a stubborn old coot. Yes, it’s true that in 1989 we were able to start a weekly community newspaper in no time because we utilized the strange new world of “Pagemaker” and “laser printers.” But, do you realize, I had still avoided all use of ATMs? I had no problem digitizing print media. I abhorred the thought of ceding my preciously small bank account to some soulless Continue Reading “All Quiet on the Email Front”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged Compuserve, email, Hayes Modem, Prodigy, Servetech

Trump, Truth, and Confirmation Bias

By Chris Carosa on July 26, 2016

I’ve been retired from active politics for more than two decades. In that time, I’ve focused on my primary business – picking winning stocks and avoiding losing stocks. It’s almost impossible to bat a thousand doing this, but I believe (and hope I’ve demonstrated) there’s a way to increase your odds.

Shortly after I left the political realm, I began in earnest to take on the financial industry establishment. (Truth be told, as readers of my initial run as publisher of The Sentinel know, I actually started this years before.) As a new firm, I had to find a position that differentiated our services from our competitors. Taking on the establishment wasn’t a rebel yell, it was a marketing imperative. Quite simply, no new business can survive if it Continue Reading “Trump, Truth, and Confirmation Bias”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged behavioral economics, Donald Trump, Modern Portfolio Theory, MPT, Neil Cavuto, politics, psychology, Ronald Reagan, Rorschach Test

America’s Pastime Sadly Past its Time

By Chris Carosa on July 19, 2016

I’ve been blessed to have lived a Norman Rockwell youth. Sure, I grew up in the gritty shadow of the Bethlehem Steel complex in the snowbelts south of Buffalo. Indeed, my elementary schools and my church were literally in those shadows. And, with my house abutting the New York State’s most famous interstate, the rush of Thruway traffic lulled me to sleep every night. (To this day people wonder how I can get to sleep when staying on the lower hotel floors in noisy New York City.)

Yet, despite the seemingly urban nature of my childhood environs, it endures as an idyllic Continue Reading “America’s Pastime Sadly Past its Time”

Posted in Gray Matter Musings, Memoir of a Real Life, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged A. Barlett Giamatti, baseball, Bill Veeck, Cooperstown, Eddie Gaedel, Hall of Fame, Pete Rose

How to Prevent Real Identity Theft: Claim Your Name

By Chris Carosa on July 10, 2016

During the heady days of the California Gold Rush of 1849, prospectors would hurry to their preferred site. They hoped to be the first to discover the valuable ore there and then stake their claim, thereby giving them preemptive rights over all other prospectors to that particular spot of land. This practice wasn’t limited to miners. The Homestead Act of 1862 (and the other Homestead Acts that followed) allowed any adult who was the first to settle a piece of property to lay claim to it. You even see elements of this “first come, first serve” philosophy in traditional U.S. Patent Law. Here, the first to claim an invention retains all patent rights on it.

These three examples have one thing in common: a wide open territory. Whether it be undeveloped land for miners and settlers, or the vast unexplored realm of ideas, there’s a bit of terra incognita associated with the idea of being the “first to claim.” The other commonality they all possess is they aren’t new. They come from an era when America was a frontier waiting to be discovered. With the passing of centuries, this “Wild West” spirit has since dissolved into the annals of history.

Yet, there remain new worlds to discover, new territory to explore, new stakes to claim. Remember when the internet exploded in popularity in the 1990s? Prospectors in that era Continue Reading “How to Prevent Real Identity Theft: Claim Your Name”

Posted in It's a Nerd's World, The Compleat Carosa Commentaries Tagged #ClaimYourName, California Gold Rush, cybersquatting, Homestead Act

Chris Carosa