Hi Portee,

Thanks for turning me on to this off topic forum. It seems like a good and relatively safe place to post messages. I am a newbie on this board and was not aware that it was available. Thanks for sharing your story with me.

I took early retirement from Concordia University after thirty three years of teaching in the Department of Psychology. I taught Statistics, Experimental Design, Gerontology and Clinical Developmental Psychology. Many of us took an offer we could not refuse. Retire at 55 and receive two years of full salary, all acquired pension and benefits as if we were 65 and continued health and dental coverage. Not too shabby! I moved from the big city of Montreal to the Eastern Townships, a rural and recreational area near the Vermont Border. I bought 30 heavily forested acres with streams, waterfalls and lots of deer and other critters. I share my home with a big white dog named El Lobo Blanco, five cats, a family of white tail deer, a moose and hundreds of song birds. My girlfriend is from Zaragoza Spain and is a neuro-psychologist at the Montreal Children's Hospital. She comes out to the country on weekends and holidays.

I lost nearly $1,000,000 in the tech bubble but have made somewhat of a comeback in Canadian oil and mining stocks. Hopefully my Hungarian gas play, Falcon Oil and my Canadian gold mining stock, Kodiak will prove profitable either this year or next.

I came over to Acoracom after abandoning both Raging Bull and Motely Fool due to the presence of far too many adolescent-acting posters who seem much more interested in insulting each other and either pumping or bashing stocks rather than intelligently discussing them. I find boards here like Kodiak much more informative, sometimes funny and always respectful. The only complaint I have concerns the rating system being employed on Agoracom. I found myself going from a 4.00 to a 1.70 overnight. I seem to have inadvertently offended somebody on another board probably by disagreeing with them about the future of a stock. The rating system being used here allows a relatively few people to either prohibit a member from ever becoming a VP or president while at the same time allowing a buddy system to promote a relatively few members. Reminds me of a high school popularity contest. I should be far too old to be concerned with this but as a statistician this fatally flawed rating system really bugs me.

Thanks for sharing your story with me I enjoyed reading it.

Good luck to us all

Doc