Your post is correct h_rattle, that mistakes truly were made, and ackowledged. I meant in my post - I wouldn't do it too much differently in the way they do things now. As to the GM, having a 43-101 in the Spring is good enough for me at present. True that pre-feasibility and feasibility are another matter, same as it would be for any other company. I think it's widely accepted that the spend-a-thon was under Chornobay - but at the same time, Bill did a lot of good things that got us going, not least the $54.x million PP (I was holding the "tombstone" for that deal in my hands two days ago).

I also see the justification Portee has in growling about dilution and the PP price this time round. I do perceive that they have very good uses for this cash; it's unfortunate that it had to be priced at these levels. There are lot of holders of old, very cheap paper on Kodiak out there, and flushing out the 20-centers while struggling for results had been a hard process. They've dumped hundreds of thousands or millions of shares on us. Our time horizon has changed from shorter-term to longer-term - like changing time zones and jet lag, it's a lot easier in one direction than the other. KXL has also switched from promoting every promising hole (and having to back down a lot, later on) to putting out results that can be backed up. There is a lag in switching from one to the other, and that has conspired with the market crash and all the above factors to keep a hard lid on prices. Eventually there is "reversion to the mean", but the delay factor is painful.

I still have a wry smile for how aptly and clearly dmastercard summed up our mood: "... it's just like waiting for christmas to get up on december 25th and realize that santa is a fake man and your christmas tree is dead. and somebody stole the lights in it."

I feel like a lot of us bought in thinking we'd purchased tickets to a massive potlatch bonanza - as many $50 bills as you could stuff into a sleeping bag in 3 minutes, or something like that. Then we got the news that the super-high grade on the GM tailed off to normal-high grade, and many of us figured we we then had only 3 magic beans to show for our investment, and we wished at least to have our cows back that made good buttermilk. But now we've come back somewhere - not to stuffing our bags with $50 bills, but a real, professional exploration company that hits gold every place they look in a great gold camp. It's not free money, but it's definitely worth more than 57 cents.

Am I happy about losing a vast amount of money? No, but I'm old enough to know that me sulking in a corner isn't going to bring the bank manager over with $1 and a candy for me (sure as heck worked when I was 5 though). I've been through some major life setbacks, same as everyone on this board, and this has been one of them - it has changed my life and money-wise not in the good way. But happiness is under our control, it's a choice - in a great Ted Talk that I never forget, Dan Gilbert presents research showing that after one year has passed, lottery winners are neither less nor more happy than people who became paraplegic:

click here for Ted Talk

click here for original paper

click here for same idea in investment terms

I don't blame the Kodiak crew. The gold gods decided to put a whole bunch of high grade at the top of the GM, and some glacier ran off with a lot of great nuggets that were rightly ours. Some money got spent unwisely - but management is different now. I picture the scene where the teenager has already flipped the truck in the ditch. Not so good. But I imagine nobody has been physicially injured, and meanwhile over the next couple of years they're (slowly) graduating from med school and their new love interest looks to be the cat's meow. Basically we're here now - it's December 2009. I've set aside where we thought we were (top), and where we thought we were after that (bottom), and I just ask the Warren Buffet question - would I invest now? I've been buying.